University of Vermont ScholarWorks @ UVM

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses

2007 A New Look at Dewey’s Cooking Lab: a Pedagogical Model for Interdisciplinary Learning in Contemporary Higher Education Cynthia Belliveau University of Vermont

Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis

Recommended Citation Belliveau, Cynthia, "A New Look at Dewey’s Cooking Lab: a Pedagogical Model for Interdisciplinary Learning in Contemporary Higher Education" (2007). Graduate College Dissertations and Theses. 20. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/graddis/20

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks @ UVM. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate College Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ UVM. For more information, please contact [email protected].

A NEW LOOK AT DEWEY’S COOKING LAB: A PEDAGOGICAL MODEL FOR

INTERDISCIPLINARY LEARNING IN CONTEMPORARY HIGHER EDUCATION

A Dissertation Presented

by

Cynthia Belliveau

to

The Faculty of the Graduate College

of

The University of Vermont

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Specializing in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies

October, 2007 Accepted by the Faculty of the Graduate College, The University of Vermont, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, specializing in Nutrition and Food Sciences.

Thesis Examination Committee:

Advisor

U < r-L($A- ~iwBerlin, ~h.8.

Vice President for Research and Dean of Graduate Studies

Date: July 3, 2007 ABSTRACT

This dissertation examines the link between cooking and learning. It first examines John Dewey’s pedagogical philosophy in which he asserts that the kitchen laboratory was an ideal learning environment to teach and learn about a broad range of subjects, an illustration of Dewey’s philosophical notions about true experiential education. Second, there is an examination of a Home Economic Department and its historical role in teaching cooking which introduces the issues of cooking and learning in the post secondary, higher education context. Finally to determine whether Dewey’s kitchen-based pedagogical approach applied in higher education, a pedagogical experiment was undertaken in which cooking was integrated into a college-level humanities course on food and culture. Reported as a case study, the ‘experiment’ was to recreate Dewey’s University of Chicago Laboratory School’s curriculum with 28 college-aged students in a kitchen laboratory at the University of Vermont. This qualitative research yielded results that suggest that Dewey’s methodology is a highly effective pedagogy at the college level and enhances students’ learning about the role of food in their own and in other cultures. Finally, these findings make the case for including more interdisciplinary, experientially based learning opportunities in higher education, generally, and for using food laboratories as a site for such learning opportunities.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank our students for allowing me to use their experiences as a way to show the power of cooking as a vehicle to learn about something. Special thanks to my co-teacher and great cook, Amy

Trubek, for her pep talks and general good humor all the way through my writing. Thanks to Jill Tarule, my advisor and friend, for allowing me to move and learn at my own pace. Thanks to Susan Hasazi and Cindy

Gerstl-Pepin, my committee members, and many other key faculty at

UVM for all their wonderful support throughout the whole doctoral program.

Finally, thanks to all the great people at UVM’s Continuing

Education, especially Carol Vallett and Susan Symula for seamlessly covering while I wrote.

ii DEDICATION

To Ed,

Alek,

Eva

and Willa

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...... ii

Dedication ...... iii

List of Tables ...... vii

List of Figures ...... viii

Chapter One ...... 1 Introduction ...... 1 On Cooking and Eating and John Dewey ...... 1 My Study ...... 5 Methodology ...... 5 Overarching Research Questions and Outline of Study ... 6

Chapter Two ...... 8 John Dewey’s Kitchen Pedagogy ...... 8 Dewey’s Philosophical and Pedagogical Framework ...... 8 Positivist Tradition ...... 9 Dialectical Tradition ...... 10 Pragmatism ...... 11 Instrumentalism ...... 13 Criticisms ...... 14 The Dewey Laboratory School ...... 16 The Design of Dewey Laboratory School ...... 22 The Kitchen Curriculum ...... 24 Cooking from Kindergarten to Second Grade ...... 26 Third Grade to Fifth Grade ...... 27 Sixth to Eighth Grade ...... 28 The Weekly Luncheon ...... 29 Operational and Instructional Organization of the Teachers ...... 31 Chapter Summary ...... 35

Chapter Three ...... 37 Missed Opportunity within UVM’s Home Economics Department ...... 37 Domestic Science Movement Pedagogy ...... 37 Brief Overview of the Domestic Science Movement ...... 38 Home Economics at UVM ...... 41

iv Historical Review of UVM’s Food Practices ...... 43 Home Economics Educational Philosophy ...... 47 Food Curriculum and Food Laboratories: A History ...... 48 Industrialization and its Influence on Cooking and Eating ...... 56 Chapter Summary ...... 62

Chapter Four ...... 64 Literature Review ...... 64 Student Engagement ...... 64 Engaged Learning: The Movement ...... 65 Engagement to Transformation ...... 68 Developmental Appropriateness ...... 70 Intellectual – Concrete vs. Abstract ...... 78 Chapter Summary ...... 84

Chapter Five ...... 85 Methodology ...... 85 Heuristic Inquiry ...... 85 Research Strategy and Methods ...... 87 Documentation Analysis ...... 87 Purposeful Sampling and Case Analysis ...... 87 Data Collection ...... 88 Data Analysis ...... 89 Quality Measures ...... 90

Chapter Six ...... 91 Results ...... 91 Food Lab Design ...... 91 Engagement to Transformation Assessment Rubric ...... 94 The Food Lab Report Format ...... 98 Objectives...... 100 Mise en Place ...... 100 Pre-Laboratory Questions ...... 102 Results: Data ...... 103 Results: Comparison ...... 103 Results: Reflections ...... 104 Assessment Spreadsheet ...... 105 Food Lab Weekly Routine ...... 108 Food Lab Lesson Plan and Student Reflections ...... 109 Lesson One: Introduction – Knife Skills and Mise en Place ...... 113

v Part One: What is Food? What is Culture? ...... 114 Observations and Comments ...... 120 Lesson Two: Measuring, Mixing and Cooking a Part Three: What Makes Food Pure? How do Religious Beliefs and Rules Shape What Gets Eaten?...... 154 Observations and Comments ...... 164 Lesson Seven: South Asia ...... 165 Observations and Comments ...... 179 Lesson Eight: South/African American ...... 179 Part Four: How Does Where You Come From Shape What You Eat Now? ...... 179 Observations and Comments ...... 193 Lesson Nine: South/African American ...... 193 Observations and Comments ...... 207 Lesson Ten: Mexican Cuisine – Corn, Identity and Myth... 210 Lecture Topic: Comida vs. Alimento ...... 210 Observations and comments ...... 219 Chapter Summary ...... 220

Chapter Seven ...... 222 Creative Synthesis ...... 222 Findings ...... 222 Results and Implications ...... 226

Chapter Eight ...... 231 Conclusion ...... 231

References ...... 237

Appendix A: Rubric ...... 245 Appendix B: Syllabus ...... 248 Appendix C: IRB ...... 253 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Engagement to Transformation Evaluation Rubric ...... 96

Table 2: Food Laboratory Report ...... 99

Table 3: Student Notebook Assessment ...... 107

vi LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Corrective Curriculum Development Template...... 32

vii Chapter One

Introduction

On Cooking and Eating and John Dewey

In 1980, after finishing graduate school, I opened a small restaurant in Vermont. I started cooking professionally then after many years as my mother’s prep cook for our large family. I was a home cook, well-versed in basic culinary techniques, but nothing that I learned at my mother’s side or in my many years of formal education prepared me for what I was to learn over those next nine years in my restaurant.

Under tremendous pressure to succeed (i.e., pay my rent, staff, and self), I quickly learned how to source food from a variety of vendors, write recipes, manage staff, take care of customers, advertise, and read profit/loss statements. The first four years I made almost all the food and cooked the meals for my customers every day from six-thirty in the morning to ten o’clock at night and was on my feet the entire time. At no time in my life was I so seamlessly connected to what I was learning. Every day was a juggling act with a trapeze artist’s sense of timing. We had to be ready for lunch at eleven and dinner by five with tables set, ingredients prepped, plates warmed, dressings made, and bread racked. When we were done, we did it all again the next day, seven days a week, year after year.

1 Throughout my own now long culinary life, when either feeding my family, cooking in my restaurant, or teaching at Vermont’s New England

Culinary Institute, I have always viewed my ability to cook as a potent bodily and intuitive experience irrevocably fused with my rational knowledge. I am unable to critically reflect or separate from the experience. My social and agricultural understanding of the complexities of taste and flavor, seasonality, food history, and diversity of cuisines merge with my understanding of nutrition, sanitation, and food chemistry, which merge with my understanding of chopping, sautéing, braising and baking, and so on. The experience is seamlessly connected to the knowledge and visa versa.

It is with this life experience and educational perspective that I entered the University of Vermont (UVM) six years ago to work for

Continuing Education. During this time, I have been struck by the distance the institution keeps from its food. There appears to be a clear separation for the students between eating on campus and learning about the food they eat in the classroom.

For one of my doctoral assignments on leadership three years ago, I wrote a paper on John Dewey. I had not studied him since my undergraduate work in education (at UVM) and wanted to know more about our institutional legend. Louis Menand (2001) had just won the

2 Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Metaphysical Club , and I decided to use his book as the basis of my paper.

The book is about American thought from the Civil War to the 1920s and focuses on three great American philosophers of which John Dewey was one. It was while reading this book that I remembered Dewey’s

(1959) pedagogical philosophy of the unity of knowledge which centrally maintains that “knowledge is inseparably united with doing; that knowledge is a by-product of activity” (Menand, p. 319). Dewey said,

“People do things in the world and the doing results in learning something that, if deemed useful, gets carried along into the next activity” (p. 392), hence the creation of the over used phrase “learning by doing.”

Furthermore, I learned, and with much surprise, that Dewey had a curricular focus on cooking as a way to “apply” this philosophy in the classroom (Menand, p. 320).

It is with this awareness that I explored Dewey’s (1959) view, that cooking and eating together is not only a didactic tool, but also instrumental in teaching us how to cooperate with and engage in our natural world and communities, and in effect create thriving democracies. If John Dewey were here at UVM today, he would undoubtedly urge our professors to make use of each student’s daily interaction with food or utilize the Food Lab in Terrill Hall as a vehicle to

3 engage the learner. This is not a capricious idea! I contend that the preparation of food connects us to our land, water, soil, and ancestors and is inherently interesting to students. “There is no better field,” to use

Bourdieu’s term, “for the analysis of globalization, migration, culture, and social identity than food” (Bourdieu, p. 389, cited in Deutsh, 2003, p. 8).

Educator Stephen Bowen (2005) says, “Engagement is increasingly cited as a distinguishing characteristic of the best learning in American higher education today. Vision statements, strategic plans, learning outcomes, and agendas of national reform movements strive to create engaged learning and engaged learners” (p. 4).

Drawing on these ideas and my own experience, I assert that the study of food and cooking are remarkably engaging and worthy of further investigation. In this dissertation, I propose that teaching college students about the world they live in through cooking and eating is relevant and uniquely integrative. We are linked by what is on our plates and by how we think about who made it, where it came from, how it was grown and transported and transformed, served, and eaten. My research is based on Dewey’s (1916) pedagogical assertion that learning happens through doing, using the study and preparation of food as the bases for this examination.

4 My Study

I used Dewey’s (1959) fundamental observations about learning as I examined the potential for integrating a cooking laboratory into college curricula.

First, in Chapter Two, I examine and critique Dewey’s (1959) interest in cooking to better understand its place in his pedagogical philosophy.

In Chapter Three, I explored UVM’s past and present food practices/curricula focusing on the Home Economics Department’s Food

Laboratory. In Chapter Four, I examined aspects of student development in order to understand how Dewey’s kitchen methodology would apply in a college classroom. In Chapter Five, I discussed my methodology using heuristic inquiry. In Chapter Six, I discussed the results of my experience co-teaching in UVM’s Food Laboratory where aspects of Dewey’s kitchen methodology were recreated in order to study his pedagogical model of synthesizing practice and theory. In Chapter Seven, I wrote a creative synthesis of my findings and their implications. And finally in Chapter Eight,

I conclude.

Methodology

Overarching Research Questions that guided the study

1. A literature review of Dewey’s curricular focus on cooking and

eating at the Dewey School.

5 • What was Dewey’s philosophical perspective?

• What was the food curriculum?

• What was the significance of its inclusion in the curriculum?

• How did it relate to his pedagogical philosophy?

2. UVM’s past and current food practices and curricula in the

context of Domestic Science Movement.

• What were the significant historical moments?

• What was the role of Home Economics at UVM and what

was taught?

• Why did Home Economics at UVM go away?

• How did industrialization influence Home Economics’

demise?

• How do UVM students currently learn about food?

My research, focused at UVM, contributes to the body of literature in food and society, and experiential education. Finally, this research provides a perspective for the study of food being more strongly connected to academic curricula across disciplines.

6 Chapter Two

John Dewey’s Kitchen Pedagogy

Dewey’s Philosophical and Pedagogical Framework

Since this is a dissertation in education and not philosophy, for purposes of this study and in this chapter, I will ground Dewey’s (1922) pedagogical perspectives by defining two generally held philosophical perspectives on theoretical and practical rationality. I will then provide context for understanding how Dewey’s philosophy evolved to pedagogy.

Within the philosophical tradition, two dominant perspectives, positivist and dialectic, emerged in the 19 th century in reaction to the metaphysic perspective – a perspective concerned with understanding reality and the existence of god. Dating all the way back to Aristotle, the metaphysical tradition, initially meaning the study of physics, had been one of understanding the universe, both divine and human. It was during the 19 th century, however, that metaphysics was contained and defined as the study of anything beyond the physical (Heylighen, 1997).

Both of the newer perspectives of positivism and dialectic had the progressive features of the secular rationalist and were critical of metaphysical dogmatism as it attempted to blend religious views with new found Darwinist views. Dewey, educated by Transcendentalist

7 professors (metaphysical tradition) at UVM, joined in this criticism early in his career and moved toward the perspective of a secular rationalist embracing both the positivist and dialectic traditions (Menand, 2001, p.

239).

Positivist Tradition

In the 19 th century, positivism was a movement associated principally with French thinkers – Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, Charles

Fourier, Joseph Proudhon, but also with Englishmen like Francis Bacon and

John Stuart Mill (Menand, 2001, p. 207). In positivism, the only true knowledge is scientific knowledge with an absolute distinction between facts and values. Although the scientific method provides more limited kinds of knowledge, the results have practical applications that build on one another over time and increase in scale. Then, as now, the general features of the scientific method are familiar to us because it has become

“the common sense” of formally educated people in science and the social sciences where, “Theories are posed in statements which codify the laws governing phenomena in quantitatively precise ways. The deductive manipulation of these laws, in conjunction with empirical observation, allows the explanation of past events and the prediction of future ones”

(Peterson, 1978, p. 65). To the positivists, it is precisely the independence of observation from theory that permits the testing of these laws.

8 Dewey was influenced by the positivist tradition and one can readily understand why. The steady development of the sciences promised mastery by society over its natural environment with freedom from famine and disease, and a rationalized social order free from ignorance, superstition and dogmatism (Kockelmans, 1978, p. 97;

Peterson, 1978, p. 67). Dewey believed science was a kind of salvation for the impoverished masses. He celebrated “science” because it suggested

“possibility, progress, free movement and infinitely diversified opportunity”

(Upin, 1993, p. 45). He believed that science would sweep away the old ideas of the past and invigorate society by embracing the dominant ideas of posivitism: “The scientific attitude would liberate us from the heavy burden imposed by dogmas and external standards” (Upin, p. 45).

Dialectical Tradition

Dewey was also influenced by German Philosopher Hegel

(Menand, 2001; Peterson, 1978). Hegel was the germinal thinker of the modern dialectical tradition; in the early 19 th century, he attempted to develop his own alternative to the earlier metaphysics tradition. He criticized absolutism, eschewing all thought that divided reality into rigid compartments (also know as reductionism). Hegel emphasized process, the structurally dynamic interconnection of elements, and the qualitative change (Peterson). Hegel placed social activity at the center of his

9 philosophy. For him, a central problem of the modern world was the tendency for agents to lose understanding and control over their own agency (Peterson) .

For Hegel, a key way of thinking about knowledge and action in a dialectical way is that of holism. “If neither objectivity nor subjectivity is absolute and independent of the other, than each can be understood only in interconnection [and interdependence] with the other” (Peterson,

1978, p. 67). The concept of dialectics meant then that there were always opposing forces seeking synthesis. Hegel believed this synthesis happened through dialogue. But for Dewey it did not end there – he took this concept and made it dynamic, more active – and this idea created a major shift in his thinking. He came to believe that even a synthesis of

“static and mechanical categories” distort what actually occurs in human behavior and experience” (Herrick, 1996, p. 12). While at the University of

Chicago and at the Laboratory School, this emerging, more pragmatic belief supposed that, “Learning was a continuum and knowledge was provisionally constructed by the mind in perpetual interaction with the world” (Bickman, 2000, p. 301).

Pragmatism

Dewey was strongly influenced by the dialectic and positivist traditions, but gradually transformed his thinking toward the pragmatist

10 perspective by the beginning of the 20 th century. The Pragmatists were critical of the dialectic’s introspection, and the positivist’s reduction static approach to philosophical questions, especially to matter and motion.

The Pragmatists, “preferred other metaphors such as ‘field’ or ‘stream’ or

‘circuit’ to suggest the continuity and meaningfulness of consciousness”

(Kloppemberg, 1996, p. 102).

For Dewey, pragmatism boiled down to a single claim: people are the agents of their own destinies and nothing is predetermined

(Dommeyer, 1946, p. 477). Pragmatism for Dewey was about incremental adjustments. It was oriented towards a determination of what should be done and how to do it, moving the inquirer to action (Galdos, 2000). For

Dewey, the universe was still in progress; a place where no conclusion is predetermined and every problem modifiable to the exercise of what he called “intelligent action” (Menand, 2001, p. 372).

Dewey was not a reformer, but a Progressive who believed in improving the quality of life under a given social structure. For example, he did not believe in industrial capitalism, a factory system dominated by rich industrialists, but was under no illusion that it would change.

Subsequently, his strategy was to promote, in every area of life, including industrial life, democracy. A democracy that he interpreted as the practice of “associated living” – cooperation with others on a basis of

11 tolerance and equality (Menand, 2001, p. 373). In order to live in this

“democracy,” Dewey’s pragmatism evolved even further to a philosophy of instrumentalism.

Instrumentalism

Instrumentalism stems from pragmatic philosophy and holds that ideas are instruments and function as guides of action, their validity being determined by the success or usefulness of the action (Britannica, 2007).

As an instrumentalist, Dewey believed all thought was conducted from within the context of a “situation” or “environment” (Lamprecht, 1924, p.

426). In Dewey’s cognitive theory, the process of thought progresses naturally from the anxiety of an unsettled situation (an anxiety directly experienced) to the comfort of the settled situation by the transformation of a situation which provides “the background, the thread and the directive clue” of our thought (Galdos, 2000, p. 134). In other words,

Dewey believed, “People do things in the world and the doing results in learning something that, if deemed useful, gets carried along into the next activity” (Dewey, 1959, p. 392).

Dewey (1959), the pragmatist/instrumentalist, distrusted all forms of foundationalism; all attempts in grounding values and thought on a priori postulates. Instead, he urged evaluation of all beliefs with the test he considered the most demanding of all: our experience as social and

12 historical beings (Kloppemberg, 1996). Experience was to be conceived, not as introspection, but through the intersection of the conscious self with the world. “Immediate experience is always relational (it never exists in the abstract or in isolation from a world containing both other persons and concrete realities” (Kloppemberg, p. 102). Consequently, Dewey’s pedagogical “instrumental/experimental/ pragmatic naturalism” can be seen as a systematic approach to the integration of this mind/body, subject/object dualism.

In the concept of work as practical activity, Dewey (1959) found the ground for overcoming the social and intellectual dualisms which he felt distorted both social and intellectual pursuits. It was for Dewey the bridge that connected home and school – learning how criteria are used in making value judgments, how means and ends are coordinated, how consequences are weighted, how social costs are deliberated, how priorities are set. In essence, practice is simply the “craft of valuation; the combination of reasoning skills, cognitive dispositions, and habits of good citizenship” (Roemischer, 2006, p. 3).

Criticisms

Critics of Dewey’s (1922) pragmatism assert that people are not always pragmatic in their wants and beliefs, and interests are not predictable and not to be taken for granted. They contend that Dewey

13 never considered “right” reasoning from “wrong” reasoning (Galdos, 2000, p. 131). Building on this critique, others challenge that his pragmatic instrumentalist approach to science was amoral. It encouraged blind commercialism and greed without conscience or “love of truth” (Upin,

1993, p. 44). But others defend Dewey by saying science to him was a synonym for reason, intelligence and reflective thought (Kloppemberg,

1996; Upin). Science to Dewey was not “science” in the positivist sense that is objective, emotion free, value neutral. Dewey argued that,

“Pragmatism [and instrumentalism] were not a defense of a ‘feudalized commercialism,’ but a genuine idealism of faith in the future, in experiment directed by intelligence, in the communication of knowledge, in the rights of the common [person] to a common share in the fruits of the spirit” (Dewey, p. 310; Upin, p. 44).

I believe Dewey’s (1922) pragmatism was directly influenced by the circumstances of his own times. The Progressive period was an age of

“solutions” where alleviating health problems, conserving natural resources, and building incorruptible political institutions was possible

(Taylor, 2004, p. 23). I would agree that today his views could appear paternalistic and, at times, even elitist in their utopianism, especially in these cynical times. The tragedies of the 20 th century have made us less sanguine about our future and in thinking that any single philosophy can

14 solve all our problems, but I contend Dewey’s enduring philosophical wisdom that “science” is active, cooperative, and shared problem solving requiring the individual to make her or his contribution to a group interest is vitally relevant for today’s troubled American democracy. His philosophical “willingness” to continue to try to find a better way, and his deep faith that we are all “worth it” is just plain hopeful, and eminently worthy of closer scrutiny as a methodology in the contemporary college classroom.

The Dewey Laboratory School

After graduating from UVM in 1879, Dewey went to graduate school at Johns Hopkins University, and then taught philosophy at the University of

Michigan. In 1894, he moved to the University of Chicago, and at the age of 35, became chair of the philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy department (Dewey, 1959, p. 5). At the University of Chicago, Dewey and his colleagues, elementary school teachers Anna Camp Edwards and

Catherine Camp Mayhew, and his wife, Alice Dewey, opened an experimental elementary school. By 1902, there were 140 students enrolled with 23 teachers, and 10 graduate students attending. The

Laboratory School became internationally recognized and was commonly known as the Dewey School (Dewey; Edwards & Mayhew,

15 1936). It was in this teaching laboratory that he tested his learning by doing philosophy blending the theoretical with the practical.

When Dewey took his philosophy to Chicago, what he and his colleagues accomplished fundamentally changed the way children were taught (Dewey 1959; 1978). As a result, he earned a reputation as a great educator. It is interesting to note that he did not regard himself as an educator or a reformer. He considered himself to be a philosopher for he said, “I think I will drop teaching philosophy directly and teach it via pedagogy” (Menand, 2001, p. 319). As he had been taught at UVM, he recognized that learning is not separate pieces of information floating in a curriculum, “but interacting, unpredictable activities forming the unity of knowledge. He saw knowledge as inseparably united with doing”

(Dewey, 1916, p. 389; Menand).

As a pragmatist, Dewey was predictably scornful of schools that separated the mechanical and the intellectual or art. He claimed that

“education” must be construed as a function of activity where something else needs to be discovered, something which mediates between these extremes. His idea that all educational aims and ends must be

“instrumental” (meaning ideas are instruments and function as guides to action) required that the student be experimentally involved with the objective world in order to see what the consequences were of her/his

16 transaction with it. It is here, in the quest for the continuity of action in real experience, that Dewey turned to the kitchen activity (Roemischer, 2006, p. 2).

Dewey believed that cooking was one of those activities that inseparably united knowledge with doing. Cooking, so central to human survival and inherently interesting to children (and adults), was the ultimate example of producing knowledge as a by-product of the activity. As stated by Menand (2001):

The children cooked and served lunch once a week. The

philosophical rationale is obvious enough: preparing a meal

(as opposed to memorizing the multiplication table) is a goal-

directed activity, it is a social activity, and it is an activity

continuous with life outside school. Dewey incorporated into

the practical business of making lunch: arithmetic (weighing

and measuring ingredients, with instruments that the children

made), chemistry and physics (observing the process of

combustion), biology (diet and digestion), geography

(exploring the natural environment of plant and animals) and

so on. (p. 32)

Each group of children prepared the communal lunch once a week, including setting of the table, reception of the guests, and the

17 serving of the meal. “Dewey thought this gave the student a positive motive for the cooking, as well as social value” (Edwards & Mayhew, 1936, p. 33).

Cooking, to Dewey, was not only a central vehicle for teaching the scientific method, but also the “logical sequence of this work formed simple and direct habits of thinking; and acting; and learning; and problem solving” (Hilgard, 1953, p. 124). Cooking also provided a tool for socialization of the student into the group. Cooking, eating and conversing in a social setting were key ingredients for educating young members of society into a life of community participation. Teacher Anna

Edwards (1936) wrote, “Each individual, no matter how young, did certain things in the way of work and play along with others, and learned thereby, to adjust himself to his surroundings, to adapt himself to social relationships, and to get control of his own special powers” (p. 303).

Bringing children into the kitchen early in life, giving them social and moral responsibilities and the practical basis for manifesting scientific intelligence within a community of inquiry was, for Dewey, distinctly educational.

In Dewey’s Laboratory School at the University of Chicago, the kitchen as laboratory, featured prominently in the curriculum. Students ages 4-14 cooked, served and ate together because the kitchen was one

18 of those environments where mind/body, subject/object dualisms melted away.

Cooking uniquely supported Dewey’s ideas and I have chosen four of his key premises to elucidate why for him kitchen classroom environment was a good test for his pedagogical philosophy. Although there are multiple interpretations of these ideas, my investigation has led me to the construction of these four interconnected themes:

1. Aims and means – The activities of the home, the fundamental

activities of living, become logically the activities of the school and

continue with ever-widening horizons. For Dewey, the student,

inherently interested in cooking, does things to and with others for a

purpose s/he understands and for the attainment of an immediate

end which s/he desires and which leads into further attempts. In

each progressive experience, the mind, stimulated by genuine

interests and desired ends, directs her/his activity as initiated by

her/him.

2. Theory of the ‘act’ – Unlike most other subject areas presently

conceived and taught, the kitchen lab is a perfect example of an

operation that Dewey refers to as a “complete act” – a complete

act of thought. In this sense, the (kitchen) work which students do

involves an integration of the various operations and materials

19 which constitute “cooking,” but ultimately must engage students in the development of a work-product-project. The pursuit of knowledge is not only productive, but a fun experience. It meets

Dewey’s criterion for “an experience” – students must be allowed to do something and then undergo the consequences of that doing: it is this rhythm, inherent in activity, which connects knowledge and experience and transforms teaching-learning into experimentation and problem solving.

3. Community of Inquiry – Though most classroom engagements are isolating, the kitchen laboratory as kitchen experience is integrating: it is work done with and through others. It is essentially a cooperative enterprise in which the teacher is a member of the group, not its sole authority. What is learned has much to do with the value status of the process itself seen as a social enterprise. Any value criterion is always situation-specific. Change and individual differences lead to group “progress,” but not in an overall sense; that is, not to some ultimate end or value, but only as a resolution of a local impediment of progress. Values are; therefore, open to evaluation and re-evaluation by the group, since some one thing achieved opens the possibility of future novelty and change.

20 4. Value-theoretic vs. Game-theoretic situations – While much teaching

learning as currently practiced is governed by a game-theoretic

design (competition, merit, grades, tests, etc.), kitchen study is not

because essentially it is cooperative and more in line with a value-

theoretic endeavor. Kitchen study, as operational, is value inclusive: all

members of the class have a place as the experience unfolds

(Edwards & Mayhew, 1936, p. 461; Roemischer, 2006, p. 6).

The critical significance then for Dewey’s educational premise and of his use of “kitchen experiences” was to demonstrate the natural transition from play to work in a student’s personal-social development

(Dewey, 1916, p. 229). I would argue that this earlier curricular involvement with “kitchen work” became the developmental cornerstone of his larger educational philosophy.

The Design of Dewey Laboratory School

As mentioned earlier, the University of Chicago’s Dewey School was started in 1896 and ended in 1904. During those eight years, John Dewey and his team created a place where curriculum related to life and experience because they believed that students would experience greater freedom if vocational and academic curricula were unified rather than separated.

21 The two teachers from the Dewey Laboratory School, Katherine

Mayhew and Anna Edwards, wrote of their ground-breaking experience in their book, The Dewey School (1936). They start with the mission: “The primary business of school is to train children in cooperative and mutually helpful living, to foster in them the consciousness of interdependence, and to help them practically in making the adjustments that will carry this spirit into overt deeds” (p. 39). Their lengthy tome chronicles the growth of the school with in-depth narrative and details about the daily activity. (I refer to this text on numerous occasions as it is a primary resource with first- hand perspectives.)

The theory of the Laboratory School was founded on the grand idea that the classroom was a mini-society and the teacher’s goal was to create an environment, parallel to an effort to develop a civilization. The teachers selected permanent contributions to the civilization in the form of enduring lessons. Beginning with the simple in the early years and gradually becoming complex in the later years, the learning was never thought of as linear and compartmentalized, but more backward and forward connections over time (Dewey, 1939, p. 470).

As has been discussed in earlier sections, the Laboratory School was designed to create imperceptible divisions between the practical and theoretical; or the home, community and school. It was, therefore, very

22 important to design curriculum that reflected this fundamental blend, which at the time were cooking, sewing and carpentry. The teachers asked these three questions when designing curriculum:

1. What can be done to bring the students into closer

relationship with their home and community?

2. How can history and science and art be introduced so

that they will be of positive value and have real

significance in the student’s own present experience?

3. How can instruction in the formal, symbolic branches of

learning – the mastering of the ability to read, write and

have numeric intelligence – be gained out of other studies

and occupations as their background? (Edwards &

Mayhew, 1936, p. 26)

The Kitchen Curriculum

“The activity of cooking is in itself its own reason for being. It constantly furnishes incentives to attempt new problems and can, therefore, be used to great advantage with [students],” said the

Laboratory teachers early in the founding of the school (Edwards &

Mayhew, 1936, p. 296). Cooking held a distinct place in the curriculum all eight years because it was so versatile a medium in which to teach about historic and social values or scientific principles. The kitchen laboratory

23 was planned and directed by two teachers whose training in the domestic sciences was coupled with a wide teaching experience. The program began in kindergarten and went through the eighth grade. At each grade level, an elaborate series of materials were developed over the eight years, with a correlated scientific experiment, to clarify the purpose or theme of the lesson.

The inclusion of cooking in the Laboratory School was not coincidental as Dewey was very influenced by the Domestic Science

Movement during that time (see Chapter 3). The grand dame of this movement, Ellen Richards of MIT and friend of Dewey’s, worked out in theory, as well as in practice (with her older female students), what was later called “the free-hand method of teaching cooking.” The method emphasized the science of cooking relating to nutrition, sanitation, and chemical and heat processes. She believed an understanding of “why things happen” allowed the home cook freedom from recipes and the ability to be more creative (Edwards & Mayhew, 1936, p. 298).

Until Dewey and his colleagues created the kitchen in his experimental school, there had been no cooking curriculum for younger students in public education. According to the designers of the curriculum, “The problem in the school, then, became one of adapting to little children the successful courses already planned and in practical use

24 for older girls” (Edwards & Mayhew, 1936, p. 299). Over the next eight years, the cooking curriculum was adapted to meet the ability and interest of the students, as well as meet the objectives of the lesson.

Cooking from kindergarten to second grade. The two cooking teachers designed the cooking experience to meet the needs of the younger student (boys and girls) by creating an experience that had a clear end. In other words, they designed the lesson so there was a clear causal link between the ends and means. The children prepared one thing, each child contributing by measuring, retrieving, and mixing one item. This exercise created for the student a sense of responsibility to the whole group. As Dewey would say, “the social end (the final preparation) reinforced the immediate one (the tasks)” (Menand, 2001, p. 372). The teachers noted that in the beginning of these “experiments,” the students’ intense interest in the final product overshadowed the process. They were not interested in understanding what was happening during the procedure, but more interested in outcome. However the teachers also noted that after exploring the “results” over a period of 18 months, the students became more interested in some fundamental principles and materials used in cooking (Menand).

An interesting aside and worthy of mention is the development of mathematical sciences, as a tool, was critical to the teachers. In the early

25 grades, students did measuring of all kinds, working up to expressing fundamental mathematical relations such as ratio and proportion and to using freely algebraic symbols and geometric construction. But it was never assumed that mathematics could be developed as a way to control social situations, “for mathematical expressions are only of use as formal tools in a special limited kind of experience. Hence, number is discussed not primarily as one of the sciences, but as a form of communication” (Edwards & Mayhew, 1936, p. 309). In other words, math in their eyes did not reside solely in abstraction, but rather was always part of the everyday human experience.

Third grade to fifth grade. During these ages, the teachers noticed a change in interest level. “[There] is a more conscious reference to technique and to what might be termed the intellectual side” (Edwards &

Mayhew, 1936, p. 299). At this stage, simple experiments were introduced because the students (again boys and girls) were capable of performing multiple tasks at a time. The teachers were very careful to tightly control the experiment so that the student could draw an inference and learn a general principle. For example, experiments with egg proteins were designed to better understand scientifically heat and heat transfer, and the denaturing of proteins, and social observation and inquiry in a social setting. “To see a class of eight year old children prepare perfect

26 omelets, using small covered sheet-iron saucepans over gas burners was a revelation of what experimental work could do” (Edwards & Mayhew, p.

307).

Sixth to eighth grade. In this age group (boys and girls), the lessons became even more complex. “The preparation and cooking of proteins was taken up. The cooking of eggs, meats and fish was followed by a review of the milk and vegetable soups, and was concluded with the preparation of batters and doughs by means of various raising agents”

(Edwards & Mayhew, 1936, p. 330). The teacher’s role at this stage was to guide and facilitate by asking questions and refreshing memories of prior work. Their focus with this older group was largely experimental. For example, the making of jelly from cranberries and apples was an occasion for emphasizing or introducing many physical processes, such as the effect of boiling water in disintegrating solid matter and in hastening the process of evaporation (Edwards & Mayhew). There was a strong emphasis on relating the process of cooking to physiology (especially nutrition and hygiene). Interesting to note here is at this point in the cooking curriculum, the cooking teachers co-taught with the science teachers.

In the older groups, students worked on different experiments and then compared results at the end of the session. Their interest in the form

27 of expressing what they were about to undertake as a result of trial and error experienced in past sessions, increased their need for clarity at the onset. They were now, as opposed to the younger groups, more interested in the preparation phase and methods for recording results. In other words, because of their past experience, they were more aware of what to ask and how to organize prior to cooking.

The Weekly Luncheon

The lessons at the Laboratory School were thematic in nature. The teachers worked closely, relying on one another’s special area of expertise in history, mathematics, language and science, using the kitchen as their medium. “Association and exchange among teachers was our substitute for what is called supervision, critical teaching and technical training and is critical and fundamental to school organization and administration” (Edwards & Mayhew, 1936 p. 374).

The time for cooking varied from one and half to two hours per week. The period was divided into two parts, 30 minutes for discussion and the rest of the time for experimentation. On Wednesdays, the students all sat down for the much awaited luncheon (Edwards &

Mayhew, 1936). Students contributed to the meal with items from home or from certain groups’ preparations that day. On special occasions such as Thanksgiving or Christmas, the menu for the lunch was elaborated and

28 extended to include the actual cooking of one food from beginning to end (Edwards & Mayhew). I include these two quotes from Edwards’ and

Mayhew’s account of their experience as evidence of the activity:

The work of getting lunch was variously distributed among the

different students. Some calculated and measured the

amount of cocoa needed, other measured and weighted

hominy and water. Others set the table, while two wrote

stories to read for the entertainment of the others. On special

occasions, the students prepared a meal for 20 people. The

meal consisted of bean soup and cocoa, and the children

themselves bought the milk, bread and butter needed. In the

meantime, some of the other students set the table and some

wrote stories to read at the table for entertainment.

Opportunity was constantly given for expression in various

mediums. By means of crayon, pencil, color and scissors, as well

as through the spoken and written word, the students were

encouraged to record the memories of a walk, [the taste of]

apples they gathered, the story they had heard, or the process

they had imagined or carried through. (p. 51)

The older groups were responsible for the servicing of the table and individuals were assigned this role in strict rotation, as in this assignment,

29 students could invite other guests (a very popular job!). The clearing away and dish washing, also popular, was again, part of the luncheon ritual. It was expected that the older students would converse with each other as they dined. The teachers often read to students at their table. As

Dewey so succinctly said, “The luncheon became a natural opportunity to show hospitality to others” (Edwards & Mayhew, 1936, p. 296-99).

Operational and Instructional Organization of the Teachers

The tone of the Laboratory school was set by the 23 teachers and

10 assistants. They were passionate about their mission and organized themselves democratically allowing for a free flow of ideas. They based their pioneering institution on two inviolable tenants:

1. In all educative relationships the starting point is the

impulse of the [student] to action, [her/his] desire

responding to the surrounding stimuli and seeking it

expression in concrete form.

2. The educational process is to supply the materials and the

positive and negative conditions, - the let and hindrance – so

that [her/his] expression, intellectually controlled, may take a

normal direction that is social in both form and feeling.

(Edwards & Mayhew, 1936, p. 23)

30 These principles determined the school’s operation and organization, as a whole and in detail. The teachers preferred not to have to have lesson plans or syllabi too predetermined or much elaboration in advance of teaching. They believed that although at times it was difficult not to rely on traditional methods (for example, they rarely used textbooks), the vitality and constant growth, as a result of the iterative process, was preferable (Edwards & Mayhew, 1936; Provenzoi,

1979).

The teachers worked cooperatively, with considerable use of the trial-and-error method that required constant check-in between teachers.

In The Dewey School (Edwards & Mayhew, 1936), Edwards and Mayhew outline a template for collective curriculum development. I include all 20 questions in Figure 1 as evidence of the extent and dimension of their planning and development.

1. What is the common end to all? 2. What is the intellectual result? 3. Is the intellectual aim single or multiple? 4. Is there any end which is comprehensive enough and definite enough to mean anything? 5. By multiple – do we want to train observation, memory, and/or judgment? 6. Are there separate ends? 7. If the end is single, how shall we relate all the subsidiary ends, such as memory, attention, observation, reasoning power, to it? 8. If it is multiple, what is the effect of that in practice; is one study especially to reach one end and another? 9. Do we work memory in one recitation and observation and reasoning power in others? 10. And if so, how shall we regulate their balance? 11. Is there any normal process of the mind which corresponds to this end which we want to reach, and if so what is it?

31 12. If there is a normal process, if the mind actually works toward it, just as the body is working toward health, what is the use of a teacher anyway? 13. Where does the teacher come in? 14. What is the relation toward this movement in the child’s mind and the responsibility of the teacher? 15. What is the relation of the different members of the group to the teacher? 16. What is the relation of the different members of the group to the class? 17. What have they to do with each other in working out this end? 18. What is the significance of the various lines of study taken up toward the reaching of this end? 19. How is the gaining of control and of new experiences to be secured? 20. What is meant by bringing in something new? There must be a point of contact, a place where the old experience comes up to the new, and from the student’s point of view, what is the new? The new is something presented to the child as a problem, a difficulty, something that is doubtful, which has enough connection with the old to make the thing continuous.

Figure 1: Corrective curriculum development template (Edwards & Mayhew, p. 369-70).

These questions helped set boundaries and ground rules for the teachers, and served like a code of conduct for how they would teach in a laboratory environment. Without getting into too much detail on the activity of the teacher community, suffice it to say, they spent significant amounts of time planning and making decisions as a group. Some of

Dewey’s important theoretical premises lying behind the work of the school were “operationalized” through these faculty meetings.

Dewey thought cooking allowed students to unconsciously and naturally participate in the scientific method. They “learned” through active investigation, testing out of guesses, in social relationship with their group. The teachers were to act as facilitator of “asked for” facts and figures and to supply books and resources when guidance was necessary.

32 As he saw it, cooking provided a natural avenue or approach to fundamental aspects of the scientific method and, at the same time, for cooperative and social interaction (Edwards & Mayhew, 1936).

Dewey believed that activity carried on under conditions of external pressure or coercion by the teacher or curriculum would not carry any significance attached to the doing. “The course of action is not significantly satisfying; it is a mere means for avoiding some penalty, or for gaining some reward at its conclusion” (Dewey, 1916, p. 203). Focusing on student interest and/or value is, therefore, paramount to the activity; otherwise, they lose interest and incentives are necessary (e.g., grades, awards, punishment, etc.). Dewey did not believe in an unsupervised, student run environment; quite the contrary. He was well-aware how tough it was for children to establish connections to the cultural and technical achievements of adult life, and then to continually increase in difficulty, always putting the interest of the child first (Provenzoi, 1979).

More succinctly, he was aware that children and young adults were inherently not impressed with accomplishments of the past, but were intrinsically interested in their active role in the “now.” Therefore, Dewey’s rejection of the concept of antecedent – that of not basing lessons in past values, interests and habits – freed the teacher and student to experiment and experience novel situations, together.

33 Chapter Summary

In this chapter, one can trace Dewey’s philosophical evolution through both the positivist and dialectical traditions finding a resting place in pragmatism. His philosophy became active when he started the

Dewey School early in the 20th century. Along with many innovative teachers, he designed an educational environment that blended the practical with the theoretical and in so doing created a fundamental change in educational thought. One of Dewey’s curricular foci was the use of the kitchen as a vehicle to teach in this blended learning model.

His kitchen methodology, carefully detailed by the teachers, was according to Dewey, uniquely appropriate and highly effective in promoting active investigation and problem solving – key elements in his pragmatic philosophy.

Although Dewey’s educational theories have been the watchword for over 100 years, no one has taken his kitchen methodology seriously. In all of my research, I was unable to find one reference that pointed to scholarly work in this area. So as my colleague and I attempted to re- create aspects of Dewey’s kitchen in the Food Lab at UVM, we were aware of creating a “new” experience for ourselves and our students.

Like Dewey, we wanted to develop an experimental methodology that was deliberately designed to present a problematic situation (in the form

34 of a recipe); then to propose a hypothetical solution (as in methods for preparation); and finally to test it (by cooking it in the Food Lab). We attempted to put “activity” at the center of our teaching-learning experience believing, like Dewey and his colleagues, that only through activity can we “act” on the hypotheses and learn about ourselves and the culture we live in.

35 Chapter Three

Missed Opportunity within UVM’s Home Economics Department

Domestic Science Movement Pedagogy

This review of the literature and historical documents about the

Domestic Science Movement is not to write the definitive essay on the

Movement itself. In this chapter, my objective was to flesh out how

Dewey’s pedagogical philosophy, especially his kitchen methodology, manifested itself at UVM. This examination focuses primarily on the history of Home Economics Department with emphasis on it ’s food curricula.

In a speech in 1899 to the American Psychology Association Dewey,

UVM’s most notable alumnus, said, “The real essence of the problem is found in an organic connection between the two extreme terms – between the theorist and the practical worker” (Dewey, 1978, p. 124).

Perhaps not aware of Dewey’s oration, it was the women faculty in UVM’s nascent Home Economics Department who were attempting to connect theory and practice by developing curricula that in many respects mirrored Dewey’s Laboratory School.

In her paper on the history of the Home Economics Department, A

Backward Look – Ahead Home Economics at The University of Vermont,

Professor Blair Williams (1987), traces the 70 year history of the department until its closing in 1982 (Ross, 2007; Tyzbir, 2007). It is in this paper that

36 Williams commends Bertha Terrill, first director of the department, for her forward thinking pedagogy of learning by doing (Williams, 1987).

Brief Overview of the Domestic Science Movement

According to Laura Shapiro in her book, Perfection Salad (Shapiro,

2001), the pioneering women of this early movement lived at a time when

“science and technology were gaining the aura of divinity: such forces could do not wrong and their very presence lent dignity to otherwise humble lives and proceedings” (p. 4). In the mid 1800’s, the main goal of this emerging movement was to elevate home standards and to lessen labor, “The constant quest was to discover an easier way”(Hoeflin, 1988, p. 14). Industrialization was already changing the nature of work with the escalation of factory jobs. In many cities, gas and electricity were beginning to change the procedures of daily life; scientists and inventors were concocting new things like the typewriter, telephone, light bulb, and calorie (Shapiro). The Movement took root in a link between what they perceived as science and the world the Home Economist knew best: housework.

The Movement, started by the pioneering women of the Midwest with incentives from the USDA, provided domestic education for farm women. These enterprising farm wives were interested in labor-saving devices and entrepreneurial ideas to alleviate arduous work and, in many

37 cases, grinding poverty (Hoeflin, 1988). For them, the challenge was to revamp traditional methods of housekeeping into something more regulated as in a business or factory setting. There was little differentiation in housework between laundry, domestic chemistry, physiology, house furnishing, care of the sick, care of children, sewing, and food preparation

– they were all critically important to the survival of one’s family (Bevier,

1906). Food and cooking, however, were of greatest interest to these ambitious women in the Movement because all housewives and their families needed it; it offered an easy and immediate access into the home (Shapiro, 2001).

By the early part of the 20 th century, the Domestic Science

Movement had moved to the Northeast as heavy immigration from

Europe and mass migration from rural areas to the cities caused unsettling societal problems. The uprooting of many ethnic groups in this new era of industrialization created tremendous disruptions in family traditions and the passing down of ancestral knowledge. Subsequently, the preponderance of this population who were uneducated and poor gave a powerful sense of mission to the Movement; it called on the middleclass to “reshape reproductive and childbearing practices and the management of the household to meet the needs of the new modern society” (Reiger, 1987, p. 479). It was a call to action by the professionals

38 or “experts” to intervene in the private sphere with programs and plans funded by philanthropic individuals and charities (Reiger).

Riding this wave of social reform was Boston professor, Ellen

Richards. With missionary zeal, Richards, an MIT chemist by training, captured this societal phenomenon and scientifically codified these domestic situations into what we now call the field of Home Economics

(Shapiro, 2001). In her Sanitation Lab at MIT and in her influential book,

The Chemistry of Cooking and Cleaning: A Manual for Housekeepers , in

1882, Richards tested and systematized the “discipline of housekeeping” into categories of good nutrition, proper clothing, pure foods, physical fitness, sanitation and efficient practices with the intention that, if upheld, would allow women more time for other activities.

The Home Economics Movement gathered steam and 20 years later, up in New York State, at the now legendary Lake Placid Conference of 1908 (organized by Richards), Melville Dewey (a distant cousin of John

Dewey) gave a paper proclaiming the future of home economics. He said, along with many other progressive women in attendance, including

Richards, “As to the work to be accomplished, the movement should not be confined merely to matters of food, clothing, and shelter but should cover all that pertains to the general welfare and environment of the home” (Dewey, 2000, p. 1). Melville Dewey’s (inventor of the Dewey

39 Decimal System) range of knowledge and work was wide and varied. He pioneered the creation of career opportunities for women. He and his first wife, Annie Dewey, developed the Lake Placid Club, a resort for social, cultural and spiritual enrichment in the Adirondack Mountains (Online

Computer Library Center, 2007). In his speech, he urged that home economics be included in college curriculum.

Several years ago, when I suggested to a college president

that he add home economics to his curriculum, he was

surprised, as if I had asked him to add the cook of the college

dormitory to his faculty. Since that time, we have seen great

change. In 12 years [since that conversation], home

economics has been introduced into educational institutions

from kindergarten to university. (Dewey, 2000, p. 1)

He went on to advocate for the organization of a national association for home economics that would be unified with monthly publications. He commended the Vermont State Republicans for their inclusion of home economics in their 1908 platform (Dewey, 2000).

Home Economics at UVM

Bertha Terrill, UVM’s first female professor, arrived in 1909, one year after Melville Dewey’s paper, to introduce the emerging study of professional Home Economics. The inclusion of a Home Economics

40 Department at UVM was unique. Up until 1909, when Terrill arrived on campus, there were no eastern colleges with such a department (the western state universities were at least 40 years ahead in curricular design)

(Hoeflin, 1988). She joined a university with a predominantly male student body steeped in the tradition of “classical” education. Terrill, a professor of Latin and Greek, was hired with a $60,000 appropriation from the State of Vermont to build Morrill Hall, to come and provide instruction for young women in “ Household Economics” (Williams, 1987). I would put forward here that like Richards, who was a chemist by training, but relegated to her own department in the School of Housekeeping at MIT, Terrill faced the same arrangement. Her scholarship in Latin and Greek did not provide entrée into the Classics department, and if she was to enter into the hallowed halls of the university, it would be in the segregated realm of

Home Economics.

A native of Vermont, Terrill was born in Morrisville in 1870. Before joining the UVM faculty, she had received a fellowship to study at the

University of Chicago and was granted the degree of Masters of Arts and then studied at MIT with Richards in the Department of Household

Administration. As mentioned earlier, Dewey was a great admirer of

Richards and included Richard’s scientific cooking methodology in his

Laboratory curriculum. Although there was no direct narrative that I could

41 find linking Terrill with Dewey, even though they were both at the University

Chicago at the same time, one does wonder if Terrill was influenced by

Dewey’s kitchen pedagogy in the same way she was certainly influenced by Richards’ kitchen methods. Wherever the influences originated, for

Terrill, blending theory and practice was central to her curricula design.

Historical Review of UVM’s Food Practices

The historical influences on food curricula at UVM are best understood through the lens of the Home Economic Department’s 70 year history. Yet I want to expand that view somewhat by including wider institutional food practices at the time as a way to contextualize and foreshadow what eventually happened to the School of Home

Economics. This section will also shed light on my reasons for resurrecting the Food Lab with new curricular intent.

In Julian Lindsay’s (1954) The UVM Traditions Look Forward - 1791-

1904, he says, “The first college in this country was established by graduates from Cambridge and Oxford. It became the veritable model to which all other institutions were confirmed” (p. 85). A peculiar feature of English universities was the furnishing not only of instruction, but also of board and lodging (Levelle, 1938; Lindsay, 1954; Wayland, 1842). UVM took this approach and early on offered food and lodging for its students.

There were various documents and records with mention of “commons,”

42 “board,” “eating clubs” and “dinners.” There was one reference, dating back to 1888, in the UVM Chart of Accounts, to food purchases (for its 47 male students) of mainly bread, rice, meat and fish (Recorder, 1888). In an interview I had with former UVM Professor of Home Economics and alumna, Marion Brown Thorpe (Class of 1938), stated that, “Up until the

1940s, most students ate their main meal in their fraternity or sorority house if they belonged to one [as she did] or students ate at downtown restaurants or boarding houses to save money” (Thorpe, 2005).

Historical information on campus eating practices gets clearer in the 1950s. There were two dining halls, Waterman and Robinson, for men and women respectively, and students ate there only if their class schedule interfered with eating elsewhere (Levelle, 1938; Thorpe, 2005).

A decade before, in 1944, a joint appointment had been made between the Waterman Cafeteria and the Home Economics Department for a faculty member to oversee the nutritional standards and the preparation of the food in the cafeteria (Williams, 1987). It also provided a faculty member to teach the necessary institutional “quantity cooking” courses (cooking large quantities for institutions like hospitals and schools) for the Dietetic majors, as well as to supervise these students in the hands- on function of the food service operation (Williams).

43 Twelve years later, in February of 1956, UVM became one of the first universities in the country to contract with an outside foodservice vendor

(Saga Foodservice Corporation) to manage their now mandatory meal plans (Reporter, 1956). Up until this point in time, UVM, like most universities across the country, made its own food and students had the option of buying it. There was no official reason for moving to a mandatory contract that I could find; however, the literature does suggest, especially in my review of President Lyman Rowell’s letters, that complaints from students and faculty were perhaps Rowell’s justification to outsource

(Bandel, 1966; Rowell, 1966). The signing of the contract also coincided with a time of tremendous growth in buildings, infrastructure and enrollments (Rowell), suggesting that the current Home Economics foodservice infrastructure was not positioned for the increase in volume.

According to Professor Brown, whose sister was the lead instructor in

Waterman Dining Hall, the staff was downsized, and the dietician course work was moved to the laboratory kitchens within the Home Economics department (Thorpe, 2005).

Interesting to note, soon after the Saga Foodservice Corporation contract was signed, there was significant student uproar, enough to warrant many articles and letters to the student newspaper, The Cynic

(Perfetti, 1956; Student Editor, 1956), about poor food quality and high

44 prices. Freshman Robert Perfetti said, “The food is disgusting and prices are outrageous, I have heard rumors to the effect that the entire

Waterman building is supported by profits from the cafeteria” (Perfetti, p.

4). The most poignant letter, however, came from a faculty member, almost nine years later in 1966, addressing the disastrous effects the contract had had on food quality, ambiance and social decorum. She claimed, “…to be ‘no food faddish,’ having happily survived in army cafeterias.” But having just finished her first meal at Waterman cafeteria in five years, she claimed that it was a “catastrophe” (Bandel, 1966).

In this historical review of food preparation and dining at UVM, I found that in each time period, food education in the Dewey pedagogical tradition appears to be important only in the Home

Economics Department. Why UVM ignored the Deweyian possibility for learning by doing campus-wide is not clear, but certainly the last sign of it was being slowly suffocated in Home Economics during this time period.

Ironically, while UVM was relegating its cooking class to a “contained” laboratory, many other colleges and universities at the time (1955-1965) reveal attempts to revamp their menus and kitchens as ways to meet new student culinary demands (Kinsella, 1978; Manning-Anderson, 1976;

Wesselhoeft, 1976). For example, during this time, the University of

Maryland student government negotiated with administrators to establish

45 a student food coop on campus that allowed students to cook and sell food at minimal profit (Manning-Anderson). In other examples, special kitchens were reserved for students to cook their own food (Kinsella).

This brief historical overview firmly establishes the wavering status food and food curricula had at UVM. What appeared to start out convincingly cutting-edge with Terrill’s arrival in 1908 appears to have slowly eroded over time. I have some suggestions further in this section as to why this may have happened, but before that discussion, let me discuss

UVM Home Economics department in more detail.

Home Economics Educational Philosophy

Terrill’s legacy of learning by doing was very evident in her work and that of her department. She was known to take professors and business people around Vermont, many times by train, to showcase what

UVM was doing. The train car was her classroom and “she brought the classroom to the towns” (Williams, 1987). Almost all classes were in the field or in classroom laboratories and focused on the practical lives of

Vermonters.

Early records dating back to 1875 indicate that the University of

Kansas was the first university to offer “women’s courses.” The coursework generally focused on four areas of the home: Domestic Economy, which included household chemistry, nutrition and cookery; Shop and Home

46 Practice, which included sanitation practices, hygiene, and repair;

Dressmaking and Millinery; and Care, which included, children, husband and the sick (Hoeflin, 1988; Shapiro, 2001; Tyzbir, 2007). The literature suggests that UVM’s Home Economics Department was similarly designed.

By1950, the curricular concentrations had changed somewhat (to meet the changing times) and included Clothing and Textile Design, Food and

Nutrition, Household Education, Home Economics Teacher Education, and, several years later, Child Development (Tyzbir). As one might guess, the student body was populated solely by female students (Williams,

1987).

Food Curriculum and Food Laboratories: A History

As recalled earlier, the intent of this paper is not to discuss all aspects of the Home Economic Department, but to focus on its food curriculum. It is with this purpose that I narrow my research to the activity in the food laboratories.

Terrill Hall was built for Home Economics in 1951, and included in this structure were three experimental food laboratories: Meal Management,

Quantity Foods, and Food Preparation. The Meal Management Lab was designed in four quadrants. In one corner was the 1940’s kitchen; in another, a present day kitchen (1950’s); in another was the kitchen of the future; and in the final was the kitchen for training “handicapped”

47 individuals to cook and eat (Tyzbir, 2007). In this Lab, students learned to cook in four different kitchen environments in order to be able to work with families in their homes or teach in schools. The Quantity Lab

(previously housed in the Waterman Dining Hall) had one large kitchen to prepare the dietetics majors for work in hospitals and schools. The Lab also had a 25 seat dining area called the Caraway Café which was available to the campus and public for lunch. The third lab, Food

Preparation, was designed as a food and consumer kitchen focusing on homemade meals and fine dining (Ross, 2007).

In the 1950’s, the overarching concentration (not a major then) for students interested in food was Food and Nutrition (Ross, 2007). The subject areas in this concentration were: Food Preparation; Meal

Management; Science of Foods, Quantity Foods; and Food Systems

Management. What I found in the old curricula was that the Food and

Nutrition concentration was not what we would consider Food and

Nutrition today. The Food and Nutrition graduates of the 1950’s were not only going to be dieticians; they were overwhelmingly going to be homemakers, too. In reading the final exam (1953) in Meal Planning, for example, one quickly realizes the intent of instruction. There are questions about food cost, methods and definitions (e.g., define what an appetizer, soufflé, Spanish cream are). There are questions about nutrition asking the

48 student to compare nutritional values of certain foods. The following question, actually difficult to answer, is very telling of the times:

4. The following is the menu for a Sunday dinner to be served

in May for the Brown family, consisting of a father, mother,

boy, 10 and girl, 8. They all go to church at 10:30 and are

home by 12:30. Dinner is served at 1:45. Make a time

schedule for preparing this meal:

Meat (beef) soup

Creamed Potatoes

Fresh Asparagus

Mayonnaise

Molded pears and Cranberry Salad

Orange Prune Cake

Milk and Coffee

Other questions focus on developing menu plans for 20 buffet style.

Another scenario problem asks:

6. Since the homemaker works, she has only 1.5 hours to

prepare the following meals and she has an apartment

range like those in the laboratory. Study the following

menus and state whether each could be better planned

49 for using time and equipment. Make only such corrections

as are necessary to this end.

Finally, questions around etiquette are asked:

a. When one leaves the table to help with the serving of food,

the napkin should be left on______.

b. The salad plate should be placed at the ___of the dinner

plate.

c. Angel cake is eaten with the ____, Angel cake with chocolate

sauce is eaten with_____.

d. A spoon is used for eating_____ ice cream; a fork or fork and

spoon is used for eating _____ ice cream.

e. If the dessert is Molded Strawberry Bavarian Cream (served

by the hostess) and Scotch Shortbreads, with coffee (served

from the kitchen), first place the ____, then continue as follow:

______.

f. When all the serving dishes have been removed and all

covers cleared, the three things to be done before serving

the dessert, in correct order, are as follows: 1. 2. 3.

g. The cup and saucer is placed from the ___side with the

___hand.

(Department, June 5, 1953)

50

All these questions, perhaps with the exception of the last on etiquette, required an enormous amount of food knowledge.

Pedagogically, the experiential quality of their education is noteworthy.

They quite obviously “experienced” what they were being asked to explain. As in Dewey’s time, the intent of instruction is indicative of the social, political and cultural construct of the era. The pre-feminist nature of their experience, however, does not diminish the use of the Food

Laboratory as an instrument of cooperative inquiry and in meeting

Dewey’s definition of “an experience” (Roemischer, 2006, p. 6).

By the late 1970’s, all three labs were consolidated into one “Food

Lab” (previously the Food Preparation Lab), with most lab courses reformatted to lecture only. The Caraway Café was closed and the space made into classrooms and office space. The Food Lab was then made available for aspects of the Dietetics curricula, including Quantity

Cooking and Basic Concepts of Food. When I asked the only two faculty who were there at the time and here now (one female, one male, in separate interviews) why they thought the labs were consolidated and aspects eliminated, the female professor explained, “In the beginning, back in the 50’s, students came in actually knowing how to cook. What they wanted was to learn how to be better managers. But later in the

1970’s, when I got here, the students were living in dorms and didn’t need

51 to know how to purchase food, they weren’t interested in meal planning”

(personal communication). She then went on to tell me that at the same time, many of the older women faculty were retiring and being replaced by younger women (and even male faculty) with Ph.D.’s in the hard sciences with strong interests in research. At that point, “The focus on the food itself really went away and there was no point in supporting that side of the curriculum. We were about food science and nutrition” (personal communication). (Interesting to note that during this time, the Food and

Nutrition concentration reversed its name and became a major in Human

Nutrition and Foods .)

During our conversation, she humorously gave descriptions of the machinery that became part of the laboratory. As a young faculty member, she worked with electric contraptions like a viscosometer, which measured thickness of liquids; a Bratzler shear, which actually chewed food and measured tenderness; a pentrometer, which measured crispness; and a compressometer, which measured density of cakes and baked products. She said, “This machinery marked a sea change for the

School of Home Economics, our mantra was to be objective only and sensory wasn’t any good” (personal communication)

When I interviewed the male faculty member as to why the labs were consolidated he said:

52 I came here in 1973 as the first male faculty member with a

Ph.D. in science. I was only one of two faculty members who

understood the need for research and scholarship. When I

got here, most departments within the School would have

been wonderful programs in a community college. They

were teaching important courses that mentored students for

service professions. But we were here to professionalize the

work; to teach the students to create new knowledge. We

were not getting into the 21st century because we were too

busy justifying the past 50 years. (personal communication)

And as history tells us, the School did not survive; by 1982 President

Lattie Coors dismantled the School of Home Economics, eliminating some departments and reassigning the rest to other colleges (Williams, 1987).

Interesting to note again, the only department to remain in the College of

Agriculture was the newly re-named Human Health and Nutrition, a title that paralleled the times as it finally removed the word food completely from its identity.

To summarize, it appears UVM’s Home Economics Department slowly destructed over a period of 20 years, starting with the foodservice contract in 1955 and continuing with several reorganizations (including

53 becoming a school in 1972), abrupt leadership turnover, and tremendous infighting over an elusive definition for an evolving discipline.

The School’s slow unraveling was symptomatic of other larger paradigmatic shifts in American society. Sputnik and a reactive focus on science happened in the 50’s; political tragedies and war in the 60’s; and millions of rebellious youths in the early 70’s contributed to a re-evaluation of cultural and traditional norms. To add to this decline, Shapiro (2001) points to the home economists themselves by saying:

What finally relegated domestic scientist to powerless

obscurity was their inability to believe in women. For all their

inexhaustible study of the subject, they almost never thought

to separate woman from woman’s work: to them, cooking

and housework were sex-linked commitments as definitive as

childbearing. (p. 222)

All these factors contributed to the downfall of the discipline of home economics and, unfortunately, one of its casualties was Dewey’s brilliant kitchen methodology. Moreover, as will be explained in the next section, rapid industrialization also paralleled these times, resulting in new cultural, technological and political perspectives toward cooking and eating.

54 Industrialization and its Influence on Cooking and Eating

Up until World War II (WWII), food growing and eating were primarily regionalized. Highway infrastructure was not built until after the war, so food distribution was still regional. During WWII, lots of government sponsored research occurred in order to give the troops sanitary nutritious meals. After the war, the technology was transferred to the domestic market (Harper & LeBeau, 2003). After WWII, “[t ]he food industry found itself confronted with the most daunting challenge in its history, to create a peace time market for wartime foods” (Shapiro, 2001). This was an important historical watershed, a technological one for agricultural productivity and food preparation, as well as for the growing influence of nutritional science and government subsidy and regulation (Harper &

LeBeau). The industrialized food system today means that current methods for preparing food, “are less likely to be found in cookbooks than in trade journals such as Food Technologist and Food Engineering ”

(Schlosser, 2002, p. 6). In a system of mass production and distribution, most industrialized food travels long distances and is either frozen, canned, dehydrated, or freeze dried (Schlosser). A large percentage of the food eaten today, especially fast food, sometimes hides technological involvement. For example, “Much of the taste and aroma

55 of American fast food is manufactured at a series of large chemical plants off the New Jersey Turnpike” (Schlosser, p. 7).

As I investigated, I was continually struck by the industrial food parallels to the demise of the School of Home Economics. Industrialization is defined as, “The augmentation or replacement of small-scale production by a much larger, more mechanized, production unit”

(Johnson, 2000, p. 389). UVM’s decision to contract its food preparation to a corporation and eventually eliminate Home Economics seems to mark a wider shift from valuing and relying on something small-scale and local to a greater reliance on a larger, more centralized, industrialized system. Institutional food preparation and eating was but one example of this shift – but a primary and important example.

Terrill and her faculty were a smart and determined group of women who believed that the study of family and one’s place in community were critically important to civil society (Bevier, 1906).

Obviously, food study was prominent in their curricula. Over time, however, the very mission of the home economist seemed to be usurped by a highly industrialized society. The home economists of yesteryear focused on the frugal use of resources and, with an ethic of individual self- reliance, focused on the wellbeing of the collective. Yet conversely, well functioning industrial capitalism required high levels of consumption with

56 control and authority “in the hands of bureaucracies with industrial and economic interests” (Brown, 1978, p. 13). Unfortunately, the small world carved out by the early home economist lost ground as greater emphasis was placed on science and technology for competitive success in a global marketplace, and less and less emphasis on the traditional practices and values of homemaking.

I have a sense of sadness when I think about what these older women must have felt as they witnessed these shifts, particularly as they accelerated in the late 60’s and early 70’s. As one interviewee said,

“These women were Home Economists; they were used to doing with so little and not asking for anything that they were passed over!” (personal communication). As I listened, I reminded myself to be careful not to make victims of these women. She went on to say, “Don’t forget, this academic shifting was happening all over UVM at the time; in fact, Home

Economics was one of the longest, most sacred holdouts” (personal communication). Perhaps I would be accused of mythologizing the

Movement here, but, to me, these women and the School were a kind of beacon; a conscience; our foremothers reminding us of what is essential – that home, figuratively or literally, is important. But their voices were drowned out by the dazzle of technology and the lure of abundance

(Levenstein, 1993). In one passage in Williams’ (1982) account, she

57 comments about student behavior in the late 60’s and early 70’s as they challenged the old traditions.

The challenge of change and adjustment to change

stretched faculty imagination and endurance. Smoking in

classes became accepted; dogs accompanied their owners

to class, were tethered outside buildings or allowed to run

free. Many found off campus housing preferable to even the

very liberalized dormitory life. Two young women come to

mind who were thrilled with the room in a country house. No

bathroom facilities provided, but they felt this was an asset

rather than a problem stating: ‘We will be having a garden in

the summer!’ Others embraced vegetarianism with no

concept of the nutritional balance they needed for good

health. Despite administrative pressure and pleas for

‘professionalism,’ laboratory dress for food classes which had

been white uniforms and hair nets for so long gave way first to

informal aprons and finally ‘come as you are.’ (Williams, 1987,

p. 54)

This passage poignantly illustrates the student break with tradition and, although not realized at the time, an irretrievable loss of ancestral knowledge. I am not nostalgic for the construction of another School of

58 Home Economics by any means. Clearly, the relegation of women to the domestic realm is exclusionary and sexist. The literature is full of commentary about role discrimination; that even when these educated women, such as Richards and Terrill, accepted their role as a “home economist,” it was only because they were denied access to the modern and academic world – the world of science, technology, and rationality, and “they believed the best way for [them] to gain that access was to re- create man’s world in woman’s sphere” (Bevier, 1906; Farmer, 1925;

Shapiro, 2001; Smith, 1920). And whether they wanted to or not, their need for academic legitimacy caused them to join with the rest of the intellectual sector in “extending its systems of values as the norm for a

‘rationally managed’ society,” but in their own realm (Reiger, 1987, p.

501).

Feminist scholar Upin (1993) puts it well when she laments that, “The loss of material feminist tradition meant losing sight of the ‘overarching theme’ of the feminist, namely the intention to overcome the split between domestic life and public life,” a split which was “created by industrial capitalist” (p. 55). This is an important and rather tragic bifurcation created by a dominant industrial system. Dewey’s pedagogical philosophy of learning by doing interjects a compelling resolution to overcome this dualism within the intellectual sector,

59 particularly the university. Because his blended learning model of active inquiry fuses the practical with the intellectual, the individual is empowered to act with both sets of abilities. Moreover, Dewey’s timeless kitchen methodology effectively bridges the home life with the public life by creating an environment that values its unity.

The challenge then is how to revive the uniquely interdisciplinary, practical and intellectual qualities of past food curricula. Does it have a place in the institution today? Are we missing an opportunity to revitalize a cooking curriculum at UVM? In my semester long experience in the

Food Lab last fall, I can unequivocally say that students are “hungry” to learn about food and its preparation. They are stimulated, motivated and enthusiastic when cooking is the vehicle to learn about other subjects.

UVM’s kitchen laboratory is exceptionally positioned to not only teach the scientific method, but also some of the lost traditions of cooking.

The idea of revitalizing aspects of the Home Economics food curriculum is taking hold at other universities across the country. An article from the Boston Globe (2004) delves into the educational aspects of

Yale’s Sustainable Food Project (SFP), initiated by star chef and mother of an undergraduate daughter there, Alice Waters. SFP has a mission that reads: “To nurture a culture in which the interwoven pleasures of growing, cooking and sharing food become an integral part of each student’s

60 experience at Yale” (University, 2005). “The program is so popular that the other food managers at Yale are trying to emulate by adding similar dishes in their more traditional dining halls” (Kummer, 2004, p. 13; Yonan,

2004, p. D1). Alice Waters’ SFP has students planting, cooking and eating to better understand agriculture, nutrition and culinary practices

(Kummer). These trends are evident at many schools, including such places as Bates, University of California at Santa Cruz, Oberlin, University of

Wisconsin, Madison, Cornell, Dartmouth, Middlebury and Ohio University

(Yonan, p. 3). Although late to the party, UVM has embarked on similar coursework developed in the Nutrition’s Food Laboratory.

Chapter Four will discuss in detail my experience in the new Food and Culture class in UVM’s Food Laboratory last fall. The course was designed in an effort to create an interdisciplinary integrative environment for students to experience culture through food preparation, tasting and reflection. Using the Kitchen Lab built in 1951 and the praxis model of our foremothers, my colleague, Professor Amy Trubek, and I experimented with re-creating the Dewey Kitchen.

Chapter Summary

In this chapter, one can begin to understand why the study of home economics was important in the first half of the 20 th century. Mass migration, war and a deeper understanding of the power of science and

61 technology forged clear career paths for women in a gender segregated society. The study of home economics at UVM, especially the study of food in its kitchen laboratories, closely followed Dewey’s kitchen methodology. The food curriculum was in most cases hands-on and situated in a problem-based learning environment. However, for many reasons, by the 1960s UVM women had more career choices and studied in other disciplines resulting in the Department of Home Economics to lose enrollments and eventually close its doors in 1982. Unfortunately, with the closing of the department, Dewey’s blended learning models, especially his kitchen methodology, disappeared from UVM and the question of how to re-vitalize this educational approach is asked.

62 Chapter Four

Literature Review

Student Engagement

To start this chapter, I want to frame my journey because it is important to understand how I arrived at the idea to re-create Dewey’s kitchen at UVM. As explained in Chapter One, my life experience – the way I “know” the world – has centered on the multidimensional aspects of food. This phenomenon is shared with many colleagues around the country and with some right here at UVM. We believe that food is central to our personal and cultural identities. But as I said earlier, food has been largely invisible in our academic history a nd when it is present, it is there with a decidedly positivistic and quantitative effort in the hopes of legitimizing it through “science.” Accordingly, today we can recognize that technology has successfully, in a sort of perverse way, removed food

– as in the planting, growing, processing and cooking of it – from our life experience. As a result, we are further distanced from the traditional rituals and practices of food production. Berry (1989) eloquently reminds us “that we have become a nation of ‘industrial eaters’ who no longer knows or imagines the connection between eating and land” (p. 126). I agree with Berry and would argue that food should be more central to the human experience, particularly with young people. Moreover, in my

63 now long teaching career, I have observed innumerable students

“hungry” for someone to connect them to this lost food knowledge. Their need to know and experience is deep down and their engagement with food intense.

I framed my cooking journey above because my experience in various kitchen classrooms, teaching vocational students, adults and children (of all ages) had allowed me to witness this innate engagement – this natural phenomenon – with the activity of cooking. This observation led me to explore the possibility of creating a similar “classroom” here at

UVM.

Engaged Learning: The Movement

As discussed in Chapter Two, for Dewey, learning happens when students are engaged in an activity of interest to them, when they encounter difficulty and look for a method of coping with the difficulties, and, thus, acquire new skills in the process (Tanner, 2004). In other words, the intensity of their engagement allows, almost seduces, them into wholly participating in the experience without being conscious that they are

“learning.”

Dewey would be happy to know that there is an exciting educational movement emerging across the United States on college and university campuses. According to the Association of Colleges and

64 Universities (AACU), this is an educational movement that goes by the name of “engaged learning.” The AACU devoted the entire winter 2005 issue of Peer Review , a quarterly journal on emerging trends in undergraduate education, to the topic. After reading the articles, it appeared that many educators agreed that “engaged learning” is superior to learning that is decontextualized, or rote, and moves us away from “frontal lecturing” and the usual instruments of textbooks, bubble exams, and grades (Bickman, 2000, p. 1). Dewey’s pedagogy connects well to this movement when he stated, “that education is not the teaching of predetermined static fact, but something integrated fully into students’ lives through perpetual interaction with the world” (Bickman, p.

1).

The question then arises as to the definition for engaged learning. Is there one? There does not appear to be a single meaning coming out of this young movement; however, Bowden’s (2005) article, Engaged

Learning: Are We All on the Same Page? , is powerful in its interpretation of the concept. Hence, for this study, his analysis becomes my instrument; a taxonomy in which to evaluate Dewey’s pedagogical philosophy in the

Food Lab.

65 Bowden (2005) effectively parses Dewey’s beliefs by separating the term “engagement” in four related, but different, categories on a learning continuum:

1. Engagement with the learning process - The most

fundamental of all and one of just getting students actively

involved. In the Lab, the novelty of preparing food in a

university classroom was of great interest and immediately

appealing.

2. Student engagement with the object of study - Here the

emphasis is on stimulation of students’ learning by direct

experience of something new. In the Lab, the ‘laboratory’

produced direct engagement with the food and, in using the

methods of empiricism (e.g., measurement, recipe reading,

data collecting, taste profiling, and report writing), students

learned as scientists learn.

3. Engagement with contexts of the subject of study - This

gives emphasis to the importance of context as it may affect

and be affected by the students' primary subject. Context

adds two dimensions to learning. One is breadth -

complementary disciplinary perspectives on a single subject

produce a more holistic and, thus, realistic analysis; and two,

66 the understanding of the consequence of acting on the

knowledge learned. In the Lab, the emphasis on the ‘culture’

part of the Food and Culture class asks students to relate,

through cooking and eating ‘other’ foods, in order to

understand and appreciate cultural differences.

4. Student engagement with the human condition - This is

especially important in its social, cultural, and civic dimensions,

or as Dewey would say, in building strong democracies.

Bowden says that in this way of thinking, the human condition is

the ultimate subject of study to which individual subjects and

disciplines should be understood as subordinate. In the Lab,

students over time began to understand how the preparation

and eating of the food prepared is intrinsically connected to

broader cultural meanings and themes. (p. 2)

Engagement to Transformation

Bowen’s taxonomy of students’ engagement with different kinds of content and with process has a clarifying heuristic purpose. Like Dewey,

Bowen’s account of engagement shows that the nature and applicability of learning depends upon the student’s relationship to the subject matter.

What is potent about Bowden’s continuum is that it eventually ends with what Dewey would call the “transformational experience;” the students’

67 ability to grow and change beyond themselves in response to what they have “engaged in” (Dewey,1916, p. 177). Remember, Dewey thought any value criterion was always situation-specific or socially constructed.

The students “changed” or “transformed” when very pragmatically, they found resolution, not to some ultimate end or value, but only to an impediment of progress. Consequently, Dewey felt that values were open to evaluation and re-evaluation, since one thing achieved opens the possibility of future novelty and change (Roemischer, 2006, p. 2).

Although he does not attribute it to Dewey, Bowen (2005), almost 80 years later, affirms Dewey’s philosophy by writing this passage:

The importance of engagement is the focus it brings to the

learner's personal relationship to learning. This emphasis is

consistent with our recent appreciation that knowledge is

more constructed than received, and that the primary agent

of learning is the student. Thus, teaching and learning are

different, and a focus on the learner is essential to the

improvement of teaching. From this perspective, we can

understand engagement as both the means to an end and

an end in itself. Teachers strive to produce engagement as a

means to learning. (p. 3)

68 In our Food Lab, we measured the students’ “transformation” through a rubric modeled on Bowden’s four point continuum. The Rubric was our tool to “get at” what Dewey saw “happen” to his students in the kitchen environment. We wanted to capture and track each student’s transformation as they attempted to reconcile what they learned with what they previously believed. It was through their weekly Lab Reports that they demonstrated this change.

With the fundamental definition of the engagement and transformation in mind, let us move now to the concepts of age and developmental appropriateness.

Developmental Appropriateness

As discussed earlier, Dewey and his team of teachers developed curricula for students aged five to 14. They worked at each stage to incorporate age appropriate kitchen activities and progressively increased complexity along the way. Consequently, I questioned whether Dewey’s methodology for elementary students was appropriate for college-aged students. My initial response to this question was, “of course.” After all, Dewey’s methodology was developed from his experience teaching high school and he re-designed it for elementary students (Dewey, 1936). Furthermore, Richard’s kitchen methodology, used by Dewey in his Laboratory School, was also designed for high

69 school students and then redeveloped for elementary students (Edwards

& Mayhew, 1936). Finally, and most fundamentally, The Laboratory

School’s central pedagogy focus was always on student interest, not student level, and, as a result, interest always drove activity. But the question still lingered and this uncertainty ultimately led to more exploration in the area of developmental psychology.

To facilitate and yet contain my limited understanding of theoretical developmental psychology of college-aged students, I will briefly summarize five key theories that elucidate the discipline, with a focus on young adults. It is not my intention to critique these contributions, but merely to suggest how the authors’ insights help to answer the question of developmental appropriateness.

The term “developmentally appropriate” is well described in the literature. “The term evokes a vision of classroom experiences synchronized with each [student’s] maturational/experiential status so that what is presented to be learned is consistent with the [student’s] capacity to learn, thereby insuring success” (Tanner, 2004, p. 7). In understanding this concept, one realizes that capacity to learn is highly variable; subject to the situation and student interest level.

Perry’s (1970) pioneering work in young adult intellectual and ethical development noted that the college-aged students “change in

70 the forms of seeing, knowing and caring that transcended the mastery of the content” (p. v). Perry’s continuum of development from multiplistic and relativistic patterns to commitment within relativism plays out as college-aged students begin to see shades of gray. This leads to an increase in tolerance, in forming mature interpersonal relationships, and, as Dewey would hope, for successfully living in a pluralistic society. “At this age, students are beginning to make conscious choices to take positions, to live their values, and to continue to search for meaning” (Chickering,

1993, p. 8.)

Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986), in their book,

Women’s Ways of Knowing , augmented Perry’s understanding of intellectual development, when they observed that, although similar, women students did not necessarily go through the stages the same way. They describe five epistemological perspectives that paralleled

Perry’s with some important differences (Belenky et al., p. 37). Namely, women often felt alienated in the academic environment and placed more value in what they learned from relationships they had with teachers and friends and in their life experience and learning

(Chickering, 1993). This observation is interesting in that 22 of the 28 students in the Food Lab were young women, leading one to infer that

71 the social closeness that preparing food together brings was attractive to the female students.

Kohlberg’s widely known cognitive theories centered on the moral development of college-aged students. A follower of Piaget,

Kohlberg described six stages of moral development and refined a method for assessing them (Kohlberg, 1971). Each stage in the theory represents a qualitatively different and more wide-ranging system of mental organization and a different conception of right and wrong.

“Progress occurs in an invariant sequence, with thinking becoming less concrete and more abstract, less based on self interest and more based on principles such as justice and equality” (Chickering, 1993, p.

18).

Interesting to note as a point of reference, Kohlberg’s work was initially based on only adolescent boys ages 13 to 16. Carol Gilligan,

Harvard psychologist and early student of Kohlberg, would later go on to criticize him in her 1982 book, In a Different Voice: Psychological

Theory and Women’s Moral Development . She noted that his research was biased in that he only studied privileged white men and boys. She felt that this caused a prejudiced opinion against women.

She also observed that in his stage theory of moral development, the male view of individual rights and rules was considered a higher stage

72 than women's point of view of development in terms of its caring effect on human relationships. She found that women were taught to care for other people and expect others to care for them. “Women’s insistence on care is at first self-critical rather than self-protective, while men initially conceive obligation to others negatively in terms of noninterference (Gilligan, p. 100).

Many of the above developmental psychologists were interested in Dewey’s pedagogical philosophy. While Kohlberg was at the University of Chicago in the 60’s he commented on his admiration of Dewey’s work when he said he, “had done much to make others appreciate the ‘old psychologist’” (Crain, 1985, p. 120). Not surprisingly then, Kohlberg’s concept of moral development is similar to Dewey’s views on the subject. Dewey wrote extensively about moral development and its place in education. Like Kohlberg, he was vehemently opposed to separating moral development from the educational experience (Crain, 1985). His philosophy that learning should not be separated from activity because it separates actions from interests is fundamental here. For Dewey, “Interest in learning from all the contacts of life is the essential moral interest” (Dewey,

1916, p. 418). Like Dewey, Kohlberg (and Piaget) believed that students develop not because they are shaped through external

73 reinforcements, but because their curiosity is aroused. They become interested in information that does not quite fit into their existing cognitive structures and are, thereby, motivated to revise their thinking. Kohlberg referred to this as the “cognitive-conflict model of change” (Crain, 1985, p. 126). Similarly, being “moral” to Dewey was not something reserved for the virtuous few; it happened through living and experiencing.

To possess virtue does not signify to have cultivated a few

nameable and exclusive traits; it means to be full and

adequately what one is capable of becoming through

association with others in all offices of life. (Dewey, 1916, p.

415)

Like Dewey, Kohlberg valued the democratic process and for students to think and act critically, to discuss assumptions, and to challenge held perspectives (Crain, 1985). Moral development, then, was dynamic and evolving, starting at birth and continuing, and always progressing through collective interaction and activity.

In our Food and Culture class, we were careful not to indoctrinate, but to guide the activity. In the syllabus, the course description clearly outlined our moral perspective or stance:

74 This course will use discursive and kinesthetic approaches in

order to understand the complex, varied, and important ways

culture makes food and food makes culture. Culture is the

sum of our every day unconscious decisions, all the

unreflective common sense beliefs and actions that shape

how we eat, dress, pray, learn and more. Thus if we want to

understand ‘culture,’ we need to experience and participate

in such every day activities. In this class, cooking and eating

will be our focus – a universal enterprise yet unbelievably

varied and complex in what happens around the globe.

Discussions, lectures, labs and tastings will guide us in

our exploration of food and culture. Along the way, we will

consider food as a symbol, food as a marker of social

hierarchy and individual identity, food as a part of religious

and moral practices, and food as a result of environmental

conditions. As part of the lab, students will learn basic

cooking skills and the taste principles of several regions

around the world.

Once the syllabus was presented, the students had to create their own moral and ethical meaning as they progressed through the class.

75 Finally, Chickering (1993) in his book, Education and Identity, focused solely on college-aged students, and reflects on all the theories above and furthers the research by saying that “intellectual and moral development should not be linked with a specific age;” (p. 35) that students are at different levels of development depending on their experience. He proposes seven vectors as maps to help determine where students are and which ways they are headed. His vectors serve as a kind of dynamic expression of development over time. Clearly, students are within ranges of intellectual and moral development as they age, but he recognized that students, “don’t always progress ‘up,’ but backtrack, weave and jump forward depending on the situation” (Chickering, p. 35).

“In short, individuals select guidelines to suit themselves and to suit the conditions of their lives” (Chickering, p. 52).

Although deliberately truncated in their presentation, these theories help clarify concepts of cognitive and moral development. Chickering’s theory correlates especially well to Dewey’s kitchen pedagogy because it focuses on student’s interest and is, therefore, flexible in its interpretation of “level.” For example, the older students in Dewey’s Lab School were largely left to experiment on their own with teachers playing the role of facilitators and guides (Edwards & Mayhew 1936). Chickering (1993) would agree with this method because at this stage, young adults are

76 establishing their own identities through the trial and error of their own experience. Teaching to developmental “levels,” meaning designing specific lessons for a student 12 or 20, may not be as important as the teacher’s ability to create an environment that allows a student’s interests to take root at any level.

As I read these theories, I started to understand why Dewey liked the kitchen laboratory so much. It is a multi-aged place with an environment that is unpredictable and not well suited for predetermined outcomes. It pulls and tugs at all levels of intellectual and moral aptitude to produce the final product. Consequently, I think Dewey would warn us not to get too caught up in the chronological notion of developmental appropriateness because all ages are capable of higher ordered thinking

- it just happens within the student’s timeframe. A timeframe that enables a perpetual back and forth between the concrete and the abstract that eventually evolves into intellectual consciousness and moral values

(Roemischer, 2006).

Intellectual - Concrete vs. Abstract

I want to make a small detour here in the narrative on developmental appropriateness to define the terms concrete and abstract because it will further elucidate why Dewey’s kitchen pedagogy is developmentally suitable for college-aged students. The terms

77 concrete and abstract are often used as chronologic depictions on a developmental continuum – meaning young students need concretized learning environments and older students need abstract environments.

Concrete means knowledge that is secure and intuitive and immediately available. Abstract refers to something which has not yet been achieved and, therefore, requires interpretation, inquiry, or some other type of intellectual work.

Paradoxically, concrete is not necessarily easy to understand and the abstract is not necessarily hard to understand. For example, in our Lab, telling a student to sharpen a knife or julienne a carrot, something seemingly concrete, was actually quite abstract for most.

The majority were not able to concretize a response.

Developmentally, then, the importance of providing sequencing in order for the college-aged student to concretize the information may appear “elementary” in its level, but necessary for the experience.

As the student matures in their understanding, they can take on more complex randomization and abstraction (Chickering, 1993).

Hence, random-abstract methodologies, such as problem-solving activities, projects, research, and laboratory experiments, involves the highest level of student input (Roemischer, 2006). This is not necessarily linear or predicated on age, however; rather, these concepts are

78 methods within evolving developmental levels. Dewey’s kitchen methodology incorporated both concepts – there were sequential drills mixed with abstract experiments. Clearly, the Chicago teachers had an understanding of age appropriateness when designing curriculum, but only within “fuzzy” self imposed boundaries because their overall curricular philosophy was focused on student interest . The interest drove the learning and that, in essence, drove the “level” and it is with this understanding of curricular design that our Food Lab lessons were planned.

In returning to the concept of age appropriateness, another important aspect we considered was one of developmental levels in time . We found temporal considerations were important and speculated, based on past experience, that even though our student’s cooking skills might start at an “elementary” level, they would probably advance quickly because intellectually, morally and kinesthetically, they were at the “maturity” level of a young adult. In other words, we speculated that the students would progress through the kitchen experience – moving from “kindergarten to eighth grade” in one semester – because as college students, developmentally they could. Our hypothesis was essentially correct as one of my journal entries six weeks into the semester confirmed:

79 10 16 06

The Lab experience has accelerated. Only 6 short weeks

ago, the students were fumbling to hold knives, set up, and

read recipes. They have moved through this awkward stage

rather quickly, with most of the cutting and chopping

happening with relative confidence. They are now genuinely

curious to smell, taste, compare and talk about the food and

its cultural origins. Almost as if each week in the semester

corresponds to a year in Dewey’s Lab School, they have

mastered the mechanical and are now more able to

intellectually experiment.

My observation that our college students correlated week to year with elementary students is notable. For example, in Dewey’s school, the first three years of cooking instruction was focused on the individual and immediate product or end. “The teachers found that the interest in immediate results so overshadowed the steps in the process he was watching that very little use could be made, from a scientific point of view” (Edwards & Mayhew, 1936, p. 299). Similarly, in our lab the first couple of weeks of the semester, the students exhibited the same behavior just described. They were solely focused on the outcome of their own recipe; had very little interest in their partner’s comments or in

80 learning the “why” of what was happening and its connection to a cultural experience.

Dewey said that somewhere between ages eight and 10, a change in interest took place, and, “the thing is done with more conscious reference to technique and to what might be termed the intellectual side” (Edwards & Mayhew 1936, p. 299). We observed about half way through the Lab (week 5-8) that the students began to understand the reasons for what they were doing. They conceptualized their Mise en

Place (explained later) more easily. By mid-term, the students appeared to move more quickly in their understanding of the day’s lesson. Their Lab

Reports made better connections to the readings on culture and to their cooking experience.

For the oldest children in the Dewey School, the “technical” aspects of cooking became more rote, allowing for more synthetic thinking. Our method was similar. For example, we started Lesson One with an emphasis on French technique and practices. After these underlying principles were grasped, the effort in subsequent lessons became more deductive. The recipes became less defined and required more synthetic thinking. And eventually, over the semester, the logical sequence of the work formed what Dewey defined as, “simple and direct habits of thinking and acting” (Roemischer, 2006, p. 3). In other words, the practical

81 blended with the intellectual and created an environment that allowed many cognitive levels to co-exist. In the end, Amy and my attention to student interest was the barometer for understanding and adjusting level.

Based on these above observations, it is clear that concepts of concrete and abstract, and intellectual and moral development do evolve as one ages, but should not be “fixed” in their classroom application. Hence, I concur that Dewey’s kitchen methodology is age appropriate for college students simply as long as the content and activity meets the student interests.

With this conceptual framework in mind, Amy and I designed lessons for the Food Lab. We were conscious of the student need for choice, starting with the choice to enroll, and then the choice to explore topics as they arose. The power of the Dewey kitchen methodology allowed ample flexibility within the lab environment.

Amy was wonderful at changing content as interests evolved. In essence, we had Dewey’s model to work from, but we followed the student lead and adjusted when necessary and our ability to acclimate to the maturity and experience of each student was positively received by all the teams.

82 Chapter Summary

In this chapter, the educational movement known as “engaged learning” is discussed and its importance in creating structure and language to articulate the transformational experience that occurs when students are able to learn through perpetual interaction with a real and dynamic problem. Bowden’s engagement continuum elucidates the stages of engagement and uniquely articulates

Dewey’s ideas of student transformation.

The chapter also delves into concepts of student developmental stages and age appropriateness in relation to

Dewey’s Laboratory School. The question: can college students have the same experience using Dewey’s framework for elementary-aged students? The conclusion is that because Dewey tirelessly focused on the interest of the student, his lessons and approach in the kitchen are flexible and therefore adaptable to meet the interest levels of students at the college level.

83 Chapter Five

Methodology

This chapter addresses the conventional components of a research design (i.e. methodology results). Essentially I created an experiment and this chapter will describe the class and the qualitative methodology used to examine the data from the experiment. I approached this case study using heuristic inquiry, and with this perspective in mind, formulated the following guiding question for my examination.

Heuristic Inquiry

Heuristic inquiry is a form of phenomenological inquiry that brings to the fore the personal experience and insights of the researcher. “The self of the researcher is present throughout the process and, while understanding the phenomenon with increasing depth, the researcher also experiences growing self-awareness and self knowledge” (Patton,

2002, p. 107).

Mostakas (1990) believes;

Learning that proceeds heuristically has a path of its own. It is

self-directed, self-motivated, and open to spontaneous shift.

It defies the shackles of convention and tradition…It pushes

beyond the known, the expected, or the merely possible.

Without the restraining leash of formal hypotheses, and free

84 from external methodological structures that limit awareness

or channel it, the one who searches heuristically may draw

upon the perceptual powers afforded by…direct experience.

(p. 17)

There are two elements in heuristic inquiry that make it distinctive within the larger theoretical framework of phenomenology. First, the researcher must have personal experience with an intense interest in the phenomenon under study (in this study, my cooking and teaching experience); and, second, others who are part of the study must share an intensity of experience with the phenomenon (the co-lab instructor and the participating students in the cooking lab).

Phenomenological heuristic research, through self-dialogue, dependence on intuition, tacit knowing, indwelling (turning inward to seek a deeper understanding or meaning of a quality or theme of human experience), and active experience allows the researcher to find “unity in hidden likenesses” (Moustakas, 1990, p. 16). The phenomenological heuristic research method emphasis on direct experience is the cornerstone of John Dewey’s pedagogical philosophy and appropriate (if not synchronistic) for this study.

85 Research Strategy and Methods

Documentation Analysis

“Records, documents, artifacts, and archives constitute a particularly rich source of information about many organizations and programs” (Patton, 2002, p. 292). Some of my data collection is through historical public and private documents, such as manuscripts, curriculum and journals particularly centered in UVM’s Home Economics Department.

I also analyzed historical documents at UVM that shed light on institutional cooking and eating practices.

Purposeful Sampling and Case Analysis

After the documentation review, I informally interviewed two faculty from the now defunct Home Economics Department who are currently active in the Human Health and Nutrition Department in order to gain deeper understanding of the pedagogical intent of the past food curricula. I also co-taught a Food and Culture laboratory in UVM’s Human

Health and Nutrition Department to test an experiential teaching model.

My intention, through participation in this classroom laboratory case study, was to gain knowledge of the transformational effects of Dewey’s integrated theory and practice methodology.

86 Data Collection

Data collection in heuristic investigation requires the researcher to gather information through ongoing dialogue. Since my study focused on

28 students’ experience in the Food Lab, the “information” was gathered through their weekly writings over a 15-week period. My “interviews” were not formal, but experiential, and over time. My inquiries were completed when the students had had the opportunity to tell their story (through the lab reports) to a point of natural closing (at the end of the semester)

(Moustakas, 2000). Data was not only gathered from weekly lab reports and plotted on a rubric, but also from mid-term evaluations, end of term reflections, and my journals.

I designed a rubric based on Dewey’s and Bowen’s concepts of student engagement and transformation (See Appendix A). The lab reports, based on a standard chemistry lab report format, allowed for weekly analysis of levels of understanding in relation to the rubric.

Students were given points for each submission. Ultimately, this spreadsheet allowed me to assess student progress over time, providing insights into the effect of the Dewey methodology on their learning and transformational experience.

87 Data Analysis

Stake (1995) described data analysis as “a matter of giving meaning to first impressions, as well as to final compellations. Analysis essentially means taking something apart” (p. 71). The first step in my analysis was organizing student lab reports to assess their experience within the rubric. The rubric was a boundary setting instrument based on

Bowden’s four point continuum and designed to measure the transformational experience. I discuss the rubric in more detail below.

In heuristic inquiry, the researcher “sits” with the data and the experience and when ready, develops an interpretation that represents the common qualities and themes that embodied the experience. “The depiction includes all of the core meanings of the phenomenon as experienced by the individual participants and the group as a whole”

(Moustakas, 2000, p. 52). In my case, I gathered the weekly lab reports, assessed them based on the rubric, and plotted the data on a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet represented the semester of activity in the form of 10 lessons.

The final phase of heuristic inquiry is the process of creative synthesis. According to Moustakas (1990), the researcher, now thoroughly familiar with the data and its themes, “illuminates and explicates the questions” using her intuition and tacit abilities (p. 31). “This usually takes

88 the form of narrative depiction utilizing verbatim material and examples ”

(Moustakas, p. 32). After the class ended, I re-read all the lab reports looking for themes in order to sort and categorize dominate experiences.

Amy and I divided the 28 students into three specific categories that we believed represented ranges of intellectual and practical experience within the student population. To that end, the three categories were represented by three actual students, one for each category.

Quality Measures

I deliberately chose the subcategory of heuristic inquiry as my methodological approach (instead of the bigger umbrella of phenomenology) because it, “legitimizes and places at the fore the personal experiences, reflections, and insights of the researcher” (Patton,

2002. p. 108). And because I am aware that feminist inquiry challenges the larger phenomenological notion that, “one can cleanse oneself of such fundamental language-based conceptions when doing data analysis” (Patton, p. 131). I find heuristic inquiry supports, even embraces, the subjectivity in research. Clearly, however, I was aware that my subjectivity about cooking and eating, especially as a chef educator, needed to be made transparent. I needed to be conscious of the fact that I brought prior theories and assumptions about applied learning into the research relationship.

89 Chapter Six

Results

Food Lab Design

Professor Trubek (or Amy as I call her) and I worked together for many years at New England Culinary Institute. We developed original curricular content and design for the then new Bachelors program in Food and Beverage Management . With a small group of innovative chef faculty, we successfully created a series of courses that blended theory and practice in an undergraduate, albeit vocational setting. Several years later, Amy and I both found new jobs at UVM and, because of our past collaboration, wanted to create something similar within the academy. As it happened, I was working on my dissertation and wanted to experiment with Dewey’s kitchen pedagogical ideas and Amy wanted to use the Food Lab for her Food and Culture class. Together we designed a course that would not treat the lab as an auxiliary to the primary lecture, as was the traditional modus operandi , but would reverse the construct and create the lab component as the central learning environment, leaving the lecture as informational and dependent upon the lab experience.

91 Using Amy’s Food and Culture syllabus (Appendix B), we diagrammed the lessons, taking care to ask ourselves the three central questions Dewey’s teachers asked at the Laboratory School.

1. What can be done to bring the students into closer relationship with

their home and community?

2. How can history and science and art be introduced so that they will

be of positive value and have real significance in the student’s own

present experience?

3. How can instruction in the formal, symbolic branches of learning –

the mastering of the ability to read, write and have numeric

intelligence – be gained out of other studies and occupations as

their background? (Edwards & Mayhew, 1936, p. 26)

For each of our 10 lessons, we re-interpreted these questions by answering them at an academic level suitable for university students. To demonstrate - in question number one, being in closer relationship to one’s home and community , we designed all lessons in a very practical way that connected the student to the actual mechanics of making food. This was accomplished within the context of their reading and writing about individual and collective cultural experiences. It was Amy and my belief that tactile handling of the food, such as, using a sharp knife and learning different cuts, being able to identify the food through

92 one’s visual and olfactory senses, and working closely with a lab partner and the larger group would bring them into closer relationship to their home and community.

In question number two, how can history and science and art be introduced…, we were confident that the syllabus, films, guest cooks, and again the “art” of cooking and eating would be appropriate. In regards to the science section of the question, I used a UVM chemistry lab format

(more detail later) as a basis for the empirical part of the cooking experience.

Finally in question number three, instruction in the formal, symbolic branches of learning…, we felt the study of culture was central to answering this question, but also worked to incorporate math skills, environmental considerations, anthropology, the scientific method, reading, and, very importantly, writing (the students were required to write a comprehensive weekly reflection in their lab report synthesizing all they had experienced in both lab and lecture).

The Food Lab, like the Dewey’s school’s kitchen, was two hours each week. We divided the students into two groups – one with 13 and one with 15 each (full enrollment) and Amy and I taught a two hour lab each week with each group. As was discussed in Chapter Two, the Food

Lab has not been renovated for almost 40 years. The kitchen’s floor plan

93 contains eight cooking stations (with stove, sink, utensils and counter space) and is roomy. There are two cabinets with electric mixers, blenders, and larger bowls, pots and pans on both ends of the room and one refrigerator close to the demonstration table at only one end. The equipment is antiquated with much of it in disrepair (for example, no ventilation, stoves that do not light, and cabinets painted so many times they do not close or open easily); however, we reasoned the situation was not unlike many of the student’s apartment kitchens, and felt this, too, was but another practical learning experience!

Engagement to Transformation Assessment Rubric

Using Bowden’s taxonomy of student engagement, combined with

Dewey’s idea of transformation, I designed a rubric for the students to use as a gauge to measure their work. The rubric was designed to correspond as closely as possible to the student’s real life experience in the Food Lab environment. My rubric was a formative type of assessment in that it became an ongoing part of the whole teaching and learning process.

Table 1 depicts the Rubric in its entirety. Note both the vertical and horizontal headings. The Rubric, admittedly a one-dimensional instrument, attempted to measure the blended activity of theory and practice on a continuum over time . The vertical titles of GUM, Organization, Mise en

Place, Results, and Reflection refer to their concrete work in the Lab (see

94 Table 2). The transformational names across the top of Novice,

Apprentice, Technician and Cook denote to some extent a notion of kitchen hierarchy. Although these names are not all used in a professional kitchen, they do give a sense of an evolutionary experience. We did not use the horizontal labels until half way through the class, leaving time in the beginning for students to become comfortable with the mechanics of cooking. We were careful not to create a game theoretic sense of expectation, where students competed for ascendancy to Cook, especially before they were ready. I introduced the rubric and concept within the first week of class and focused primarily on the vertical side as it detailed expectations for the central Food Lab Report. Students received up to 20 points each week for the Reports, but did not receive a Novice,

Apprentice, Technician or Cook designation until later. At mid term, we reviewed the rubric again and this time focused on the horizontal cells and reminded them of its use and application for the remainder of the semester. It was at this point that I “graded” their weekly Lab Report with one of the designations.

95 Table 1: Engagement to Transformation Evaluation Rubric

Elements Novice Apprentice Technician Cook

Grammar, Writing is not Grammar, usage, Demonstrates an Demonstrates Usage, and clear, with little and mechanics ability to master complex writing Mechanics evidence of an interfere with GUM so that strategies to understanding of comprehension reader can engage readers college level of ideas. engage ideas. and transmit grammar, usage ideas, for and mechanics. example use of metaphor, analogy, transitions, parallel construction.

Does not follow Follows the lab The report Fluent and Organization the lab report format. Ideas, contains clear seamless format, ideas are though clear, are and logical organization— scattered, does not clearly progression of reader is clearly not support supported, ideas. The introduced to evidence. evidenced or organizing main idea, the cited. structure is components of appropriate to the notebook topic. Uses two flow easily from pieces of point to point, evidence per lab and conclusion report and cites synthesizes appropriately. points. Uses multiple clear and descriptive pieces of supporting evidence and cites appropriately.

96

Does not present Develops a Develops a mise en Develops a mise en Mise en a schematic for schematic mise en place schematic with place schematic Place mise en place. place but does not a linear sequence with a linear create a linear and explains each sequence and sequence from step from beginning explains each step first to last to end of the recipe from beginning to activity. or recipes. end of the recipe or recipes. Anticipates any possible problems with timing and finishing. The lab report The lab report The lab report not The lab report Results: does not convey conveys an only conveys an conveys and Cooking an understanding of understanding of the understanding of Experience understanding of the cooking experience but the experience, the cooking experience and connects to the connects to the experience or provides empirical empirical detail. empirical detail, provide detail of the and also refers to empirical detail results. present and past about the results. food lab experiences and lectures of self and

others Results: You understand You are engaged You are not only You are actively Readings the lab in the lab engaged in the topic engaged and can and experiment but experiment and of study but are able identify and Reflections are not able to are able through to connect the connect multiple engage it at its this experience to experiment with perspectives, most connect with the lecture. In other analysis and fundamental lecture topic of words you are able consequences. You technical level study. You can to provide context to do this through or identify and identify and what you are active sharing in connect the connect with your learning. Your conceptualization experience to personal writing reflects a and building of lecture. experience. deeper your reflections understanding of with lab mates. multiple Your writings perspectives, reflect a culture- analysis, and the centric analysis consequences. with recommendations that take full account of these multi- perspectives.

97 The Food Lab Report Format

The Food Lab Report provided the structure for the student Lab experience. As in Dewey’s Laboratory School, Amy and I wanted the students to understand that this class was also a practical discipline and we were interested in the application of the scientific method. In Table 2, one can review the Food Lab Report in its entirety. In order to stay true to the scientific method, the Food Lab Report was modeled after a generic chemistry lab report designed by a teaching assistant in UVM’s Chemistry

Department (Vallett, 2007). However, this course was not designed as strictly deductive or solely with the empirical hypothetical approach of the hard sciences. We wanted to include interpretive qualities of the social sciences, too, and, therefore, added a reflection section to the end of the report in order to push students to make meaning out of what they had empirically learned. This addition was critically significant in that it called attention for the student to stop and think, and then synthesize the practical and the intellectual through the writing process. With this in mind, I will explain each category fully.

98 Table 2: Food Laboratory Report Objectives This section will contain all of the objectives for an individual lab. Mise En Place In this section you will outline the procedure that you will follow during the lab. This includes the preparation sequencing starting with the raw ingredient and ending with the finished dish. You should list the equipment you will need. You should include a drawing or description of how you will organize your work station to go from start to finish. You should also include general food safety and health precautions that need to be considered. Pre-lab In this section answer two of the five pre-lab questions given by your questions professor. Results: Data In this section you should describe the finished dish. What did it look like? What did it taste like? Did the results conform to expectations - your own, from the recipe, or from the instructor? If yes, what made it work? Was it the recipe? The equipment? Prior experience? If no, what went wrong? Was it the equipment? Was it the ingredients? Was it lack of experience? Results: In this section, consider how your dish compared to those of other Comparison teams? Sometimes you will all make the same dish, but at other times you will want to compare tastes, techniques, etc. as part of the objectives for the lab. Results: In this section, reflect on the relationship between the lab experience Reflections and class discussions. What do you know now about the relationship between food and culture? Connect these reflections to your every day life by considering the relevance to your cooking and eating practices. This section should be 2-3 paragraphs and include direct references to lab experience as well as readings. These references can be examples, quotations, and anecdotes. Objectives . In this section, Amy and I prepared no more than five objectives for the day’s lesson. Like the Dewey teachers, we had a notion of the outcome in mind (e.g., the final dish) and reminded the students of previous lessons when we started the next, but like the Chicago teachers, we were less sure of how the students would get there. Examples of objectives for an earlier lab read:

In this lab students will be introduced to:

1. The role of seasoning in cooking, especially salt and

pepper.

99 2. Cultural variations in types and amounts of seasoning.

3. Seasonality as a constructor and constraint in cooking.

Students will continue to work on:

4. Reading a recipe to organize a work space.

5. Knife skills with different types of foods.

6. Basic heating principles: boiling and sauté

Mise en place [MEEZ ahn plahs]. French for “everything in its place” refers to having all the ingredients necessary for a dish, prepared and ready to combine up to or prior to the point of cooking. Most importantly, the recipe must be “visualized” in all its detail. Mise en Place is about building a conceptual framework in which to operate. It supplies mental scaffolding for effective action. The students’ ability to “see” before the experiment happened was critical to their success. This section in the Lab

Report was not only devoted to writing about what was going to happen, but also drawing the steps in the recipe on a separate sheet of paper. For example, in an early lab, we asked them to write, and draw how they were going to prepare for making applesauce:

Read the recipes for mashed potatoes and applesauce and

come up with a Mise en Place or ‘operating procedure’ for

how to go from raw product to finished dish. Who will do

what? In what order? How will your space be organized?

100 We believed that their ability to express what they were about to undertake helped define the experience. When things did not go as planned, they were better able to appropriately deviate. Their time management, fluidity of motion, accuracy in data gathering all improved when Mise en Place was done ahead of time. Dewey concurred when he said, “The only way to achieve traits of carefulness, thoroughness, and continuity is by exercising these traits from the beginning, and see by it that conditions call for their exercise” (Dewey, 1910, p. 66; Tanner, 2004, p.

150). At the conclusion of the semester, most students said that the concept of Mise en Place was the most useful skill learned and had increased their organizational skills in other facets of their lives.

The concept of Mise en Place is conceptually a profound one and one I will discuss again later in the paper. Suffice it to say here that many sessions were spent articulating the concept and actions for a proper

Mise en Place.

Pre-laboratory questions . The intent of this section was for Amy to get them to research different concepts before coming to class. If we were doing a session on French cuisine, she might ask them to research different kinds of cheeses. In the beginning, we asked them concrete questions about measurement equivalents and product identification.

Later the questions became more abstract. In most cases, there were

101 three to four questions of which they were to choose two to answer. To illustrate, in an early lab, we asked them:

1. Find out about cooking and measurement:

How many ounces in a pound? How many tablespoons in a

cup? How many teaspoons in a tablespoon?

2. Find out about cooking measurement:

How many cups in a pint? Pints in a quart? Quarts in a

gallon? How many ounces in a pint?

3. Find out how cinnamon is grown and processed, and

where it is grown.

4. Find out how cardamom is grown and processed, and

where it is grown.

Results: data . In this section, the student compared their assumptions (based on their Mise en Place) to the actual results. The paired team members discussed with their partner what went right and what went wrong based on some prompting questions we embedded in this section:

In this section, you should describe the finished dish. What did

it look like? What did it taste like? Did the results conform to

expectations - your own, from the recipe, or from the

instructor? If yes, what made it work? Was it the recipe? The

102 equipment? Prior experience? If no, what went wrong? Was

it the equipment? Was it the ingredients? Was it lack of

experience?

Results: comparison . In this section the teams turned to the rest of the teams to compare their results. They considered: How your dish compared to those of other teams? Sometimes you will all make the same dish, but at other times, you will want to compare tastes, techniques, etc. as part of the objectives for the lab . Amy and I prepared the students for this experience with careful intention. In the middle of the kitchen was a large counter. The students took their preparations, put it in a clean bowl or plate, and “presented” it to the group. The students were given a piece of paper and wrote down their station number and listed any deviations from the recipe (i.e., “We forgot salt,” or “We put cinnamon instead of cardamom in,” or “We were the team that used the

Cortland apples”). With notebooks and forks in hand, the students walked around the center counter smelling, inspecting and then spooning

“samples” onto their plates to taste. We then sat down together and discussed our findings.

Results: reflections . In this section, the students wrote about their experience in the lab and its connection to their life and community, prompted by questions to:

103 Reflect on the relationship between the lab experience and

class discussions. What do you know now about the

relationship between food and culture? Connect these

reflections to your every day life by considering the relevance

to your cooking and eating practices.

The students were asked to write between two to three paragraphs and include direct references to lab experience, as well as readings. These references could be examples, quotations, and anecdotes. Interestingly, what we often found were that most students wrote at least two pages, many times single spaced.

For me, the Reflection Section was the ultimate manifestation of the students’ progress for it was here that I watched them explain what they were experiencing. Bewildered, yet excited at first, they fumbled a bit as they tried to make sense of their new situation in the kitchen. Frustration eventually yielded to constructive dialogue as they began to calmly internalize what it was they were learning.

The Reflection section was based on Berthoff’s idea of the

“dialectical notebook,“ In which students write on one side of the page and use the other to make later connections and observation, putting the mind in conversation with itself (Bickman, 2000, p. 3). It was our intent for the students to have an opportunity to intellectualize and, therefore,

104 become more conscious of their transformation through synthetic writing about their practical experience. Each week I read their reflections and as each week passed, I became more intimate with and more connected to the changes they experienced.

Assessment Spreadsheet

The Rubric assessed the students’ weekly Lab Reports which were then captured on a spreadsheet. Table 3 presents the spreadsheet in its entirety – the names are fictitious. On the vertical side, under each name, are a total number of points which, at the end of the semester, equaled a grade. Unfortunately, we could not follow the Dewey School’s no grade policy as UVM is a merit-based system and required numeric evidence of the student’s work. The coding system reflects student progress based on the Rubric . On the Rubric’s Y axis (vertical side), I used the first letter of each section to denote completion of the work. For example, OMPDCR – represents O for Objectives, M for Mis en Place and so forth and so on. I then added the first letter of the X axis (horizontal side) of the rubric from

Novice to Cook to denote progress as well. As mentioned above, each section was worth a certain amount of points. Although designations were not given to the students until mid-term, I tracked them for this study from the beginning.

105 Even though Amy, as the lead professor, had to collect points for final grading, we were both more interested in how and when the student moved through designations during the semester.

106 Table 3: Student Notebook Assessment

Chopping Peppers/Onions Potato/Apple Ratatouille Eggs Soup #6 NAME #1 9.5/6 #2 9.11./12 #3 9.19/20 #4 9.26/27 #5 10.2/3 10.9/10 XXXX PDR - A OMPDCR - T OMPDCR - A OMPDRC - A OMPDCR - T Points 0 20 10.5 20 20 17 SALLY OMPDC - T OMPDCR - T OMPDCR - A OMPDRC - T OMPDCR - T OMPDCR Points 0 15 20 20 20 20 BETH PDC - A OMPDC - A OMPDCR - A OMPDCR - A OMPDCR - A OMPDCR Points 0 14 15 15 19 18 JAKE OMPDC - A OMPCR-A OMPDCR - A OMPCR - A OMPDCR - A OMPDCR Points 0 17 17 15 19 20

MID TERM Indian Indian African Southern Mexican #11 NAME #7 10.16.17 #8 10.23/24 #9 10.30/31 #10 11.6/7 11.27/28 TOTAL XXXX Tech Apprentice Tech Apprentice Cook Points 20 18 20 15 20 93 SALLY Cook Tech Cook Cook Cook Points 20 20 20 20 20 100 BETH Tech Tech Tech Cook Cook Points 20 20 20 20 20 100 JAKE Tech Tech Cook Cook Cook Points 20 17 20 19 20 96

KEY Points Scale O = Objectives = 2 M = Mise En Place = 3 P = Pre-Lab Questions =3 D = Data = 3 C = Comparison = 3 R = Reflections = 6

Improvement Continuum C - Cook T - Technician A - Apprentice N - Novice

107 Food Lab Weekly Routine

Each week the students were required to prepare a dish. Teamed with the same teammate for the duration of the semester, the partners were to come prepared for class having read the recipe thoroughly, drawn their Mise en Place, and ready to ask questions.

Upon entering the Lab, the students immediately donned an apron, removed all jewelry, pulled their hair back, washed their hands, and began gathering the proper utensils and ingredients for their dish. They arranged pots, pans, utensils, along with all ingredients, in sequential order for cooking the dish. The technical sequence was planned out by the lab partners. Like the Dewey School, variations in the plans were worked out by the teams and the teachers.

Again, as in Dewey’s Kitchen, once Mise en Place was completed, the students and professors gathered at the demonstration table (viewing mirror above) to watch and discuss certain aspects of the recipe they were to make that day. For example, we demonstrated the proper way to cut an onion, mold a tortilla, perform a taste comparison between apple types, or smell and identify a table of South Asian herbs and spices.

The students then asked questions based on their understanding of their

Mise en Place.

108 In most cases, the six teams, of two students each, were given three variations on a single recipe, in which two teams made the first, two others made the second, and the remaining two teams made the third. This way, during the comparison testing, there were at least two dishes of the same recipe for students to compare. As in the Dewey Kitchen, the recipe “experiments” were progressive and continuous by design and each became part of the larger whole adding complexity and more questions after each lesson. As one student said at the end of the semester, “I came in here thinking I knew how to cook, I leave knowing I have lots more to learn.”

At the conclusion of the lab, teams “broke down” their stations, meaning returned unused ingredients, washed dishes, put knives back in their knife kits, sanitized counters, and put aprons and towels in the washing machine.

Food Lab Lesson Plan and Student Reflections

I have spent countless hours with my student’s Food Lab Reports .

Similar to pen pals, each week I collected their work with anticipation, like receiving one chapter at a time of a good mystery. I read them, asked questions, corrected typos, praised, pushed on their insights, and then returned them to wait for their next weekly installment.

109 To describe the students in our lab would be to say they were a multidisciplinary group of 28 students majoring in environment, anthropology, psychology, education, business, and/or nutrition and food science. They were all between the ages of 20 and 22. One student was

Latina and the rest were white of European descent. There were five male students in the group, and all but one student successfully progressed through each lesson and passed the class.

In this section, the Food Lab Lessons are described using a heuristic inquiry methodology. Dialogue is a key investigative tool in this method; therefore, in my case, the student’s voice (through written narrative) is an integral part of the exploration (Moustakas, 1990, p. 47). The weekly student writings, fully observed by the reader, evolve and through this process of iteration and trial and error they make meaning out of their experience.

I started the investigation at the beginning of the semester in Lesson

One and progressed to the end of the semester by Lesson Ten. In each lesson to follow, I started by didactically reviewing the objectives of the lab, explaining the recipe, and methods and details of the process, and then moved to the student’s verbatim excerpts about their experience in the Lab. In order to detail the experience in this way, at the conclusion of the semester, I reread all 270 lab reports and compared it to the 15 week

110 student assessment spreadsheet to look for themes and corroborate student progress. Because there were too many students to focus on individually, Amy and I picked three students that we believed represented the larger group of 28. The three students were chosen because they represented three distinct categories or ranges of intellectual and practical experience within the student population. The students are fictitiously named Kim, Jake and Beth (names not reflective of their gender). Definition is important here: by intellectual, I mean level of experience in critical thinking; and by practical: I mean level of hands- on experience. Important to note, there were no students who came to the class with both high intellectual and high practical experience.

Before delving into the Lessons and the excerpted student narratives, let me profile the three students and the categories they represent.

• Higher Intellectual and Lower Practical Experience

Kim came into the class with an understanding of anthropology,

cooking, and had experienced, through travel, other cultures.

Through her narrative, one could readily see that she had been

exposed, through her family experience, to cultures and situations that

were “different” from hers. She had been to many countries around

the globe and had eaten a varied diet both in and outside her home.

111 Through these encounters, Kim learned to appreciate “otherness” and was, therefore, more able to engage in the Lab with a higher level of awareness. In other words, Kim was willing to fully “jump in” to the new cooking and eating lab experience.

• Higher Practical and Lower Intellectual Experience

Jake came to class without an intellectual understanding of food or its connection to culture. He had recently re-enrolled at UVM after taking time off. He neither traveled widely nor had he a familial experience that gave him exposure to other cultures, especially through cooking and eating. During his teens, he worked at many jobs that exposed him to different life situations and this gave him real depth in his practical abilities. It was his most recent job as a restaurant cook that appeared to help him crystallize his need for an intellectual path. Cooking different foods and interacting with staff from all over the world allowed him to examine his own prejudices and come to the realization that he needed to go back to college for the intellectual experience.

• Lower Intellectual and Lower Practical Experience

Beth came to the class without consciousness about her cultural experience. She had not traveled out of the United States and had no familial background that had exposed her to cultural differences. Her

112 arrival at UVM was her first “away” experience. As a result of all this,

her intellectual and practical knowledge of food was less than her

peers. During the Lab, she repeatedly labeled herself a “picky” eater

as a way to deflect her resistance to tasting the food we prepared

which meant she avoided or did not have the experience of

connecting to the “otherness” of other cultures’ foods.

Heuristically, the students’ written accounts of their cooking experience allowed them to act as co-researchers. I was faithful to their exact words not only because the authentic voice is critical to my method, but also as a chef educator, I am aware that my subjectivity about the transformational aspects of cooking might influence my findings. Having my readers read real excerpts over time allows them to

“participate” in the experience and witness the transformations without the interference of my interpretation. To that end, the narrative accounts are deliberatel y long and detailed, moving from the empirical to the philosophical, in an effort to capture this sense of “time,” and minimize any bias.

I did choose the excerpts, however, and each was selected from the four sections of the lab report – Mise en Place, Data, Comparison, and

Reflection. Particular passages were picked because I thought they captured a compelling observation or belief that was relevant in defining

113 each student’s transformational experience. As mentioned, the student narratives are long, so I further bolded pertinent comments within each excerpt to provide my reader with an “abridged version” of the transformation. These excerpts, like time lapse photography, shed light on the student’s growth over the semester.

Lesson One: Introduction – Knife Skills and Mise en Place

Part one: What is food? What is culture? In this first class, the students were in a large classroom seated at small desks with Amy in the front of the room. She talked briefly about how foods are influenced by culture, biology and geography and then asked them to write about their own food experiences as a way to get them to center in their own cultural experience. In sorting the comments, about two-thirds of the students learned about food from their mothers and grandmothers. Comments like, “My cooking skills and knowledge are basic and I often use the guidance of my mother and grandmother, especially on the phone when

I’m in the grocery store,” “Growing up, my parents cooked all of our family’s meals and during that process I love to observe the different techniques,” “I mostly taught myself to cook, taking some simple elements from observing my mother and begging my father to teach me,” “My dad is a chef and my mother hates to cook.” Others said they were influenced by cooking shows saying, “I’m an avid watcher of cooking

114 shows.” “Most of what I learned is from either my grandmother or cooking shows.”

Next Amy presented them with the Rubric and asked them to assess their skills and knowledge. As one would guess, we received many different answers, from, “I’m a really bad cook” to “I worked in a restaurant and have some skills.” One student said, “My specialty is scrambled eggs and baking brownies/cakes out of a box.” On the rubric, most students assessed themselves at the Novice or Apprentice level.

In analyzing the three students and their responses, Kim’s comments were indicative of her experience. She said, “I love to read cookbooks and learn about other cuisines around the world. I am not a great cook, but know the basics. I want to get precise in my understanding of seasonings, knife handling, and other techniques like sautéing and chopping.” She commented that she placed herself in the Technician category.

When reviewing Jake’s comments, he put himself as an Apprentice, saying, “I think I have the basic concepts of cooking down, but I’m still not very skilled with the organization or techniques, I still need more practice.”

In response to the experience question, he wrote,” I’m a second semester freshman because last spring, three weeks into the semester, I left UVM. I thought that was the end of my schooling. I went to Lake Tahoe and lived

115 in a cabin and worked in a restaurant kitchen. I’m back at UVM because

I want to include food, nutrition, and agriculture into my [learning] structure. I’m here because the skills I learned in California led me back here.”

Beth’s responses are a little different. She said, “I’m a decent chef when cooking the foods I often eat which, as a fussy eater, isn’t a broad range of foods. On the global scale, I’m not very adventurous with my cooking.” She placed herself in the Apprentice category.

Amy and I introduced the students to the Food Lab several days after the first class by preparing an “acclimation” lesson. We wanted them to learn basic knife skills and gave them all 10” chef knives, cutting boards and a pile of carrots and onions. At the demonstration table, Amy showed the students the proper way to dice an onion and batonnet a carrot with exactitude. It was important for them to learn how to hold the knives properly and to relax enough to push down and then glide their knives as they sliced and chopped the vegetables. They were nervous, yet completely transfixed by the exercise. Amy and I dressed in our white chef coats to simulate a professional atmosphere, walked around, adjusting knife holds, rearranging Mise en Place, and demonstrating proper technique again and again and again. The two hours flew by for the students and their instructors.

116 When I reviewed the student Lab Reports for Lesson One, they showed their unfamiliarity with the report format. The Mise en Place drawings were simplistic and missing certain ingredients. The empirical sections of Data and Comparison were not detailed enough. The

Reflection section, however, was fascinating. Their awkwardness in the lab kitchen and their newness in following the Lab Report format was surprisingly understood and clearly articulated in their reflections.

As Kim pondered her first lesson she wrote,

I know I will have to get used to holding and

using the knife right, but I definitely feel I

have obtained some good skills in cutting uniform

vegetables. I realize now that there is more of a

science and procedure to cooking that I have

previously learned.

I was thinking about the wasted part of the

carrot and how it is silly to cut a carrot into a

squared-off stick, but I also realized how fun it

was to eat that cubed thing – to eat a vegetable

in a very inorganic form is impressive. Take

Campbell’s “chunky” soup and there they are:

cubes of potatoes, cubes of carrot, cubes of

117 chicken. What is our fascination with turning

curvy organic, food full of inconsistencies into

uniform cubes and squared sticks?

Is it because people don’t want to know what

their food really is?

I think there is a turn away from this way of

thinking, a new culture of eaters, who want to

know where their food comes from, who want to know

how it’s made and who want to see all the

inconsistencies in food to know what is ‘real.’

Kim is obviously excited about her first lesson in the Lab. Turning to Jake he has similar feelings.

Jake reflected:

I came to the lab thinking that I was going to

show off my culinary skills, but my ego was hurt

more than the three fingers I cut. The knife was

a lot sharper than I expected, but once I got

past that, I found the new technique was a lot

easier to chop vegetables.

118 In lecture we were talking about what we eat and

why we eat it. I feel like this lab connects to

our lecture because it really shows how many of

us haven’t had to chop an onion, or the carrots.

We eat baby carrots that come prepackaged. If we

haven’t been involved in cooking at home or had

any outside opportunities, something as simple as

chopping vegetables can seem so foreign to us.

Our generation doesn’t have time to cook, and we

are missing out on important skills that will

help us in the future .

Beth, focused on getting her station environment under control, wrote more about the lab experience itself than its connection to her life experience.

Her Mise en Place Section, she wrote:

The first step was to obtain a sharp knife, a

sharp paring knife, a cutting board, a red bucket

for bleach water, an apron, a large bowl, hand

towels, and an onion. Remember, when working with

knives to have closed toed shoes, never catch a

falling knife, and always cut using the lower

part of the knife rocking from the tip down.

119 In her Comparison section, she wrote:

Compared to the other teams, I would say that my

teams’ cuts ranked amongst the most successful in

the class. Some of the teams’ pieces weren’t

uniform.

In her Reflection, she talked about our distance from our food and stated:

Look at pepperonis on a piece of pizza. I found

it was easy to separate the act of eating the

flat circular pieces from the cow that it had

come from.

Observations and comments. Clearly, the students are finding their way in the kitchen. The abstractness of the practical exercises of preparing, chopping and slicing with such precision and rules had them questioning their abilities. On the Rubric, the students were clearly at the

Novice level, or as Bowden (2005) said, “at a fundamental level of engagement with the learning process” (p. 2). As noted in the comments above, each student was visibly motivated by the novel activity of the kitchen laboratory and they were eager to learn more.

In their Reflection sections, I noted a movement toward the

Apprentice level, or “engagement with the object of study using methods of empiricism” (Bowen, 2005, p. 2). Their nascent investigative skills were

120 honed as they learned comparison techniques, observation skills, and practical competence in smelling and tasting.

Lesson Two: Measuring, Mixing and Cooking a Favorite Family Recipe

As the students progressed through Lesson One, we introduced them to Lesson Two: Basic heating principles, boiling and sauté and cultural types and variations of seasoning with emphasis on salt and pepper. There were two recipes – applesauce and mashed potatoes.

Amy had brought a variety of apples from her orchard for teams to experiment and compare. In the lecture, Amy encouraged them to taste different types of salt and compare them and then had them watch old

Julia Childs tapes, as well as the more modern, Alton Brown on Food

Network .

The students improved sequencing and organizing skills at the opening regiment of putting on their aprons, washing their hands, getting their sanitizer buckets, knife kits, and ingredients in place. They also became more familiar with their lab partner. However, they continued to struggle with knife handling, the lab format, and the dreaded Mise en

Place.

The students were required to hold their knives in an exact way.

Hand directly over the knife with fingers firmly gripping the sides. Their other hand had to be positioned almost at a right angle to the knife with

121 fingers curled under and knuckles resting against the side of the knife.

Needless to say, we continuously adjusted positions and used many band aids for minor slices and cuts in these early weeks. To their credit, even though this was a very concrete exercise, they were fixated on getting it right. The students did not understand the abstractness of Mise en Place and we received continual complaints, especially about the required drawing of the schematic. “Why do we have to draw the picture?”

“What’s the point of writing about it before hand?” were repetitive refrains. We reasoned with the students by saying that we would like them to draw the Mise en Place picture for four weeks of the semester in order for them to better conceptualize their experience before class, and then only needed to write about it. Amy and I commented to one another many times on our surprise at their timidity when drawing the picture. Why was the act of drawing causing them such anxiety? Even the most able students became emotional at the prospect of drawing their recipe schematic.

In reviewing the three students, Kim began to understand the importance of her Mise en Place by writing in her Mise en Place section:

We began peeling the apples with a paring knife.

The demonstration made it look much easier than I

found it to be. After I positioned my hand, it

became a little easier .

122

While we were waiting for the potatoes to cook,

we crushed the cardamom pods with the side of the

knife. We tested the potatoes by inserting a fork

in them and then we mashed them and seasoned them

with sea salt and pepper.

Kim also started to see satisfaction and, in her Data section, she observed:

I was very pleased with how the dishes came out.

Our applesauce looked and tasted very different

from the applesauce I had pictured in my head

that is the canned Mott’s variety.

I was very pleased with our mashed potatoes. We

decided to leave them chunky instead of whipping

them all the way through.

In her Comparison section, Kim declared:

What a difference in apple varieties! I was

shocked at the variation between consistency and

textures of the applesauces.

With the applesauce, we all used different apples

and spices so I anticipated variation. With the

123 mashed potatoes, however, the only ingredient

that varied was the salt. Still the results were

surprising. My favorite was group #4 who used sea

salt and heavy pepper.

Finally in her Reflection section, Kim confirms:

Cooking with others in class has really given me

insight into how cooking is a unique endeavor

each and every time. While watching Julia Child

cooking show, I was inspired to try and make

bread on my own. Her ingredients were so simple,

just like in lab, but the results are so

different. This, coupled with different varieties

of a food, as we saw with the applesauce, will

have an enormous impact on your finished product.

This experience highlights our dependence on, and

faith in recipes. With so few people cooking, it

seems recipe collection is done for more of an

aesthetic purpose.

I babysat for a couple in high school who had a

new house with a very large, modern kitchen and

an enormous collection of recipe books. Yet, when

124 you opened their fridge or cupboard, there was

nothing in them that required cooking.

Watching Julia’s show, it seemed that her recipe

was more of guide… this was apparent in noting

the difference between Julia’s and Alton.

Kim was slowly becoming conscious of her culture through the lens of food. In each section of his report, Jake detailed his thoughts and offered solutions.

Jake started his Data section by saying:

This week we made mashed potatoes and applesauce,

two things that I have never made before. I broke

out in a cold sweat.

In this week’s lab, I wanted to concentrate on my

technique, especially my knife skills, I also

wanted to trust my palate .

I have never used cardamom in cooking before and

loved the complexity that it added to the sauce.

Before the class, I never thought much about salt

before. The salt that we were asked to add to our

125 mashed potatoes was fleur de sel. I didn’t think

that it complemented the dish very well because

the salt didn’t dissolve in the mashed potatoes,

so the consistency was quite bland.

In his Comparison section, he said:

If I had to do this lab again, I would have a

better system for tasting everyone’s dishes. I

want to be able to sit down and discuss the

different dishes with my classmates.

In his Reflection, Jake affirms:

There are many factors to consider when writing a

recipe. Pictures, length, details like certain

varieties of food or special tools, written

descriptions of what to expect, are all details

that can change the outcome of a meal.

I’m a planner, and if I’m cooking a recipe that I

have done many times, I know that I can stick to

the plan. I am starting to realize that I don’t

want my everyday personality and habits to

reflect the person I am in the kitchen. I want to

be about to try applesauce with cardamom or try a

126 different variety of apple than the recipe calls

for.

Beth’s Lab Report is again short and basic in its construction. She avoids her Mise en Place and skipped to her Data section where she said:

Our mashed potatoes, at first, looked a little

mealy and weren’t coagulating properly. After

adding extra milk, they started to look more

normal and tasted very good. As for the

applesauce, I prefer the taste of cinnamon to the

taste of cardamom so I didn’t eat much of the

applesauce.

In Beth’s Reflection, she confirms her naiveté:

The lab taught me a lot about apples. I never

knew the difference between apples and what

apples were used for what type of cooking.

Observations and comments. In this lab, the mise en place was still conceptually an external structure for the students and their reluctance to

“draw” it significant. Amy and I received countless questions about this.

Several tried to download software so they could sketch their schematics on the computer; one young woman took pictures during class, once everything was set up, and then penned in the names of ingredients to hand in with her report. Their discomfort with physically drawing a very

127 simple schematic, and their preference to only want to write about it, revealed a cognitive inclination that was most likely a vestige of their academic training. This was especially ironic since many students mentioned in their final class evaluations that the Mise en Place routine was of great benefit to not only in class, but in their organization outside of class.

Lesson Three: French Regional Cooking

By the third week, we noticed a change in the students. They became more organized as they became more comfortable with cooking procedures and their Mise en Place. They demonstrated the same intensity, but it was now more focused. Where they were more hesitant before, they began to appreciate the comparison part of the lab, liked tasting each other’s food and receiving critique on their own preparation.

In the beginning of lab, Amy discussed French cuisine and its traditions. The French were the first to really codify cooking with remarkable exactness and we wanted the students to experience this attention to detail in their cooking. We bought small rulers so they could measure each vegetable cut (i.e., julienne, batonnet, dice, etc.) precisely. At this point in the semester, the recipes became more complex and required more steps and procedures.

128 We designed the lesson to teach the students the difference between slow and quick cooking techniques for vegetables; to learn about emulsions (for example, making mayonnaise); and to understand regional variations in techniques. We chose ratatouille, a braised dish of eggplant, zucchini, onions, tomatoes, peppers, and seasonings. As before, we reinforced Mise en Place, knife skills with an emphasis on uniform cuts, and reading recipes.

As in the past two lessons, the three students were learning to cooperate with their lab partners in the need for greater efficiency. Kim started her mise en place section with the comment:

With so many ingredients and steps, the procedure

for this recipe did not come as easily as the

last few. We laid out two baking sheets for

pressing the eggplant, a cutting board, two sauté

pans, wooden spoons, chef’s knife, paring knife,

twine and cloth for bouquet garni, bowls for

chopped veggies and for food waste, and bleach

bucket.

Our workspace was full and organized and I began

chopping 1” cubes of eggplant. Meanwhile my lab

partner chopped the tomatoes, a vegetable we have

129 not worked with into 90 degree angles then

chopped them into 2” cubes.

In Kim’s Data section, she said:

The results were great! There were many steps

involved and I would probably have dismissed this

recipe because I’ve had ratatouille before and

was never impressed. If I had made it, I wouldn’t

have salted and drained the eggplant and would

have left out the bouquet garni all together!

In her Comparison, she observed:

The flavors of all the groups were similar, but

there were subtle differences. For example,

groups #1 and #2 used more lemon than the others

and this stood out .

In her Reflection, Kim said:

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about

authenticity. The subject has come up in my

Museum Anthropology class and I’ve discovered

cooking raises a lot of the same issues. One

memory that stands out in my mind was a trip I

took to Italy during my sophomore year. We were

on a budget and decided to have dinner at a

little outdoor café in Sienna. I ordered a dish

130 with tortellini. It was the worst pasta I’d ever eaten. It was not cooked all the way through, frozen on the inside, and even the sauce wasn’t warm. Yet there I was eating authentic Italian food because I was in Italy!

The ratatouille we made was a French dish, but if all the vegetables we used were grown in VT and prepared here, then what? Does this authenticate it as a Vermont dish? Certainly it is local.

Perhaps inspiration should be the word we more readily adopt when tempted to designate a dish authentic.

Jake started his Data section with:

I was very excited with the results of this week’s recipe. It was one of the first dishes that I’ve tried to make at home. The dish had rich, dark colors, and the three main vegetables really complimented each other. My lab partner and I only had to look at each other when we tasted the dish to know we were successful!

131 I could taste the hint of lemon, but I think that

the detail would have gone unnoticed if I hadn’t

been the cook.

The recipe this week was not as detailed as in

the past, and I learned the value of having a

Mise en Place and really knowing the recipe

before coming in. I’m beginning to realize the

value of preparing ahead of time it really does

save you time and the results show in the final

product.

In his Comparison, Jake remarked:

It can get overwhelming tasting eight different

dishes and trying to separate the different

tastes in your mouth, but there really are

different characteristics that make the dish

stand out.

Some dishes were very salty, and I found that the

ones that were undercooked tended to have a lot

of salt or lemon .

132 The different colors of the dishes were amazing.

Some looked like dark stewed vegetables that

would go well with whole wheat pasta and other

looked like a fresh summer dish that would be

served with grilled chicken – they separated into

slow cooked (darker) and quicker cooked

(lighter).

In Jake’s Reflection section of his Lab Report he said:

The connection I made in this lab that we have

been doing in other labs as well is the cooking

technique of the onions. I realized that they

need to be cooked in a hot pan and allowed to

break down and caramelize – that’s how you get

flavor.

Our entire Mise en Place could have been

different and trying to figure it out during the

lab would waste time. If I were to do this lab

again I would read through the recipe more

carefully. In this lab, I was not really very

well read and I was unprepared, and the

combination left me feeling kind of lost for the

first ten minutes. I was cutting the zucchini

133 when I should have been cutting the onion, then I had to rush to cut the onions so I would not be falling behind my lab partner.

I’m rarely around other people that cook, besides my family, and like anything else in life, you can learn so much from other people. In the kitchen I worked in

CA, I was working with seven other people, all of us with very different backgrounds and techniques. I have been thinking a lot about American’s relationship with food and why we are so disconnected from our food source.

We have been talking about the concept of terroir in class and the idea that something can be unique because it comes from a certain region.

In America we hear about the competition for the best French fries, the best cheeseburger, the best cup of coffee, but we rarely hear about the region that grows the best tomatoes, the orchard wit the best apples, or the area that produces the best cheese. A potato is a potato, a cucumber is a cucumber, soil is soil.

134

I’m taking this class after being away for a semester

and I’m pretty undecided in my major. This class and

others classes that I’m taking makes me think about

the connection between the dinner table and the

garden, and in my studies I would like to bring the

two together .

Beth’s report was again shorter than the other reports and in her mise en place, she noticed,

We cut the vegetables in the order in the recipe.

After we started to sauté, one person finished

cutting up the vegetables and cleaned as much as

possible, while the other watched the food so it

wouldn’t burn.

In the Data section, she noted:

Our finished dish contained caramelized

vegetables. Each of our vegetables had their own

distinct flavor, instead of a blended flavor like

other groups . I think our dish came out well; I

had never had ratatouille before so it was

interesting to try such a combination of

vegetables.

135 In her Comparison section, she said:

In some dishes you could clearly taste the

vegetable oil and salt. I think that a lot of

this is related to the size of the vegetable

cuts, the amount of time spent cooking, and the

amount of herbs and other seasonings.

In Beth’s Reflection, she confirms:

The more labs we do, the more I learn of specific

dishes and foods being tied to them. Even though

in the U.S. we seem to have less of this that a

country like France it is still present. In

Vermont for example we are known for our maple

syrup and Cabot cheese. The more I learn about

French culture and their local specialties the

more I wish the US had something similar.

Observations and comments. In three short weeks, the students demonstrated what Dewey called the “complete act” of thought through their cooking experience. All writings reflected a genuine immersion in the activity. Like the early ages in The Laboratory School, they had been initially focused completely on their own preparation and outcome. This self-focus was evidenced in a common theme of liking their own food

136 best. Interestingly, no matter how burned, over or under salted, they always preferred the food prepared by their own hands.

During this week, however, we noticed the students started to look outward and their Mise en Place showed a more conscious attention to technique and to performing multiple tasks at a time.

Lesson Four: French Haute Cuisine – Social Status

Part two: How does food reveal the social order? The French codified all cooking techniques within a hierarchy of levels from simple to complex. Haute cuisine, or high cuisine, is the name the French give to obsessively detailed and complicated dishes. In this lesson, we chose to work with the egg because we could demonstrate several French techniques.

In the Dewey’s Kitchen Lab, the students cooked with eggs and scientifically studied the effect of heat on albumen by figuring out how water temperature changed the appearance of the egg white (Edwards

& Mayhew, 1936). During this lab, we wanted the students to cook eggs in a variety of ways and make an emulsion (garlic mayonnaise).

Eggs are a very common topic in all food curricula that started back in the Domestic Science Movement (Hoeflin, 1988). Here in UVM’s

Nutrition and Food Science Basic Concepts of Food , students in lecture study egg structure, coagulation, and foams (Ross, 2007). For our lesson,

137 we wanted the students to experience how to cook the perfect omelet, hard cook an egg, and make an aioli mayonnaise emulsion.

French chefs consider an omelet the ultimate sign of cooking mastery. Amy and I arrived at the lab extra early as making the perfect omelet is not an easy feat. When the students arrived, Amy demonstrated omelet making on one of the small kitchen ranges in the Lab. The demonstration went well. We had also prepared aspic for the hard cooked eggs in order to demonstrate how to make ouef angele, a fancy egg dish considered haute cuisine . We decorated the eggs with slender pieces of chives, carrots and tarragon and then coated it with the gelatin.

The students were mesmerized by our artistic creations. Finally, we showed them how to whisk egg yolks, oil, garlic, and lemon into a light yellow aioli mayonnaise. They asked questions about the recipe relating to amounts, timing, and Mise en Place and then began their work.

The students had many dishes to make that required many steps.

The three student Lab Reports shed light on their experience.

Kim stated in her Mise en Place section:

Timing was everything in this lab, in order to

achieve the best results, there was a very short

window of time to execute specific steps so as

not to overcook or undercook the eggs.

138 In making the aioli, we separated two egg yolks

and slightly heated it and then began adding a

thin stream of olive oil and whisking briskly.

We placed the half yolk side down into the

gelatin and began our preparations to decorate

them. I opted for a geometric design and my lab

partner cut flowers out of the carrots to create

a little garden picture. Professor Trubek came

over and poured gelatin over the eggs for sheen

and we placed them in the refrigerator to set.

In her Data section, Kim said :

I love eggs so this was a fun lab for me. The

ouef angele looked lovely and was very pleasing

to the eye, but I found them rather bland for

eating. Their appearance led me to expect great

things. However, when I bit into it, I realized

that it was just in fact a hard-boiled egg with

some cold chicken Jell-O on it, kind of boring

and kind of strange. I am accustomed to thinking

about food decorations as limited to pastries and

dessert items. Yet this dish proved that

139 aesthetics extend beyond dessert, at least for

the French who seem to have it all figured out!

In Kim’s Comparison section she shared:

I loved the group’s who used only a half a cup of

olive oil. Their mayonnaise seemed to have an

almost vinegary flavor and it was very pleasing.

In the Reflection, Kim referred to the class reading assignment:

In Revel’s essay in The Taste and Culture Reader

(Revel, 2005) he asserts, ‘When I eat a dish

reputed to be exquisite, the name that it bears,

freighted with approbation given it, interposes

itself between my sensation and my consciousness .

I can persuade myself that the taste pleases me,

whereas a slight effort of attention would prove

the contrary to me.’ (p. 52)

In class, I was really excited to try the ouef

angele because it is French and French food is

fancy and delectable or at least I’ve been told

all my life. But it was boring.

In class, I was free to reveal my true feelings,

but if I was in a venerated restaurant or in the

140 home of someone important, I’d probably have said

otherwise – and not to be polite. I may have

convinced myself that I did believe it was good

because it was French and pretty.

This sentiment works on the other end too. I mean

that I often find myself convincing myself that I

don’t like a food even if I think it tastes good

because I think I should not be eating it. Fast

food for example.

How foods are dedicated high and low is

constantly evolving. I’m sure when it first

opened going to McDonalds was considered a

demonstration of higher social standing, having

the extra income in order to eat out.

Kim’s honest comments are revealing as she tried to orient herself on the subject of high and low status foods. Jake has similar comments.

In the mise en place section, Jake had lots to say about the omelet.

When I typed in ‘How to cook the perfect omelet’

into Google, over 200,000 results came up! The

omelets have a short cooking time and we will eat

them right after we cook them, so it makes sense

141 to make them after we are done with the aioli

sauce and after we decorate the eggs.

In the Data section, he observed:

I had never made aioli sauce and I have never

been a big mayonnaise fan, but I was open to the

recipe because I think what has scared me about

mayonnaise is that I have never really understood

what it is.

The aioli sauce had a light yellow color and a

creamy, runnier consistency compared to store

bought mayonnaise. We left out half the oil and

until we tasted it, we didn’t know if would be

good (it was).

I have never decorated eggs before and liked

cutting slices of carrots into small triangles

something I didn’t think I would be too excited

about.

Before this summer, I had never made an omelet

before, then at the resort, I waited tables and

my side job was making omelets. Breakfast was

142 buffet style, but guests could ‘build their own

omelet.’ I didn’t know what to expect with a

French style omelet, compared to the thick,

cheesy American style omelets I made all summer.

It was light, custardy, and not browned and I ate

the whole thing.

In his Comparison section, Jake commented:

It was a different kind of comparison, instead of

tasting each others’ dishes, we were admiring

each other’s egg artwork.

Our aioli had the best consistency the others

were runnier. I don’t think it was because they

added more oil, I think it was because we were

more intense about mixing in the oil.

In Jake’s Reflection, he too discussed a reading :

After reading Tasting of Luxury, Taste of

Necessity (Bourdieu, 2005, p. 76), I thought back

to my cooking and experience during the last lab

and realized how much my social status and what

is expected of me affected how I acted.

143 I have grown up not with the struggle to find food, but of choosing from the vast amounts of food and also teaching myself discipline to not eat everything in sight. What Bourdieu said about

‘one can begin to map out a universe of class bodies, which tends to reproduce in its specific logic in the universe of the social structure (p.

76) made me think about a game that we would play on a slow night at the cinema that I worked at.

I would be selling concessions with a co-worker and as the customer would walk to the ticket counter to buy their admissions ticket, we would guess what they would buy. There were many factors, male or female, age, clothing, whether they were a group or a couple, even what movie they saw. A middle aged woman who looked fit would order a medium popcorn with butter and two waters, compared to an overweight couple who would usually order a medium popcorn without butter to prove a point that they were making a health choice, and then order a large Coke. A teenage girl on a date would order a small diet

Coke with Twizzlers, a teenage girl with friends

144 would buy a large popcorn to share. A large family that looked poor would order more food than the large family that looked well-off because going to the movies was a special occasion for them and they wanted to go all out.

Women always had to justify getting butter on their popcorn by telling me that they didn’t have dinner or it was for their husband or boyfriend.

Carhartt, mud running hicks bought orange soda and Skittles. School teachers bought chocolates and brought their own coffee. Senior citizens brought in old popcorn bags for 75 cents refills.

And college students paid with quarters and felt guilty for spending their laundry money. I remember one night as a big, rough looking man walked to the counter and I whispered to my friend, “large root beer” and I was shocked when he ordered a small pink lemonade!

We are so divided in our food choice by social status, sex, weight, but mostly everyone seems to feel guilty for eating or spending too much on food.

145

The 200,000 results for how to make a perfect

omelet is a powerful message that even if we are

divided by our social status, information and

time can bring us together . If some took the time

to show the working mother that supports her

family on food stamps how to cook the perfect

French omelet, she could treat her family to a

‘gourmet meal at the same price that she would be

cooking scrambled eggs.

Beth began to engage in the experience. She began to open herself up to the French perspective of giving care and attention to one’s dish. She started her mise en place section with the comment:

When I came to lab, I had a whole lay out

planned; however, by cooking numerous dishes, the

initial set up I had in mind did not work. We had

to wash some of our dishes because we started to

run out. Though as planned, we used both sides of

the counter to prepare our food, we ended up

predominately chopping and preparing to cook and

the other side became the site for final touches

and dirty dishes.

146 In her Data section, she observed:

Our omelet came out better than expected. I

thought that without using any milk that it would

be impossible for my omelet to taste good, when

it actually tasted better.

Our aioli came out worse than I expected . Never

making mayonnaise before, we thought it was

necessary to use almost all the oil, which I

think in the end, ruined the flavor. It tasted

like virgin oil and garlic.

In Beth’s Comparison section, she continued:

My omelet was the most yellow when looking at

others . Our aioli looked pasty compared to the

others that were quite soupy.

In Beth’s Reflection:

When making an omelet, I was convinced that the

way I made mine was the best way until I made

them in the lab. The methods that we used in the

lab were much quicker and more efficient than the

method I used.

147 I also preferred the taste of the omelet without

the milk compared to the milk I usually use.

By preparing the three different types of eggs in

this lab, the idea that food presentation/

appearance is really important sunk in. I can see

why chefs put so much time and effort into making

their dishes look pretty . It is also a lot of fun

to take the time to decorate the food you make.

I am now beginning to view chefs as artists, for

they can be very crafty with their creations.

Observations and comments. At month one, the students began to open up and embrace the lab experience. They were all completely and seamlessly involved in their activity, almost as though they were not aware that they were in a university classroom. Their Mise en Place, Data and

Comparison sections were greatly improved as their empirical skills of tasting, comparing and observing sharpen. The practical skills of knife handling became easier.

In their Reflection sections, their ability to connect the concept of haute cuisine and high and low foods to their cooking experience marked a breakthrough in their intellectual grasp of the content. Jake’s reflection

148 was especially engaging as he attempted to understand his own prejudges of the cultural differences in high and low foods.

Lesson Five: French Haute Cuisine

We continued on with our topic of French cuisine and codification by having the students make soups and vinaigrette. In the lab, we started with a basic chicken stock and vegetables and Amy and I then instructed them to make variations of each soup. In this lesson, the objective was for the students to understand how the French, through a laborious process, documented almost all of the oral cooking traditions and techniques. The

French developed elaborate systems for tracing the lineages of a sauce or soup back to only five “mother sauces” (Peterson, 1998, p. 12). For example, in our lab, we had the students add a curry mixture to the basic chicken stock to make Mulligatawny soup; in another, we had them add tomato paste and garlic to make Pistou . Finally, we had them make olive oil and red wine vinegar vinaigrette. The only item we demonstrated was cutting and washing the leeks. We felt they had experience with making the vinaigrette because it was a variation on the aioli.

Amy and I continued with our emphasis on exactitude. If they were going to “experience” French culture through its cooking, then precision was critical to their understanding. The seemingly simple soup recipe proved to be quite complex because there were multiple steps using

149 many pots and utensils, which necessitated numerous and repetitive readings of the recipe.

In this Lab, we turned up the heat so to speak. The students were getting less guidance from us. Kim commented about the multi-steps in the recipe by saying in her mise en place section:

It seems like the Mise en Place will continue to

get more complex and hard to keep organized

overtime.

This lab was really unlike one we had done in the

past, because of all the intricate cuts necessary

for the vegetables .

In her Data section, she noticed:

The finished dish of the potage julienne tasted

very good. We ended up really enjoying the fine

cuts of the vegetables, because it made for even

consistency of the dish.

In Kim’s Comparison section, she commented on the vinaigrette:

I thought our vinaigrette was a little oily even

though we did the emulsification correctly. I

tried other groups and found them better than

ours, which was interesting.

150

Finally, in her short Reflection section, she compared societal rules to cooking rules:

There are rules everywhere, from cooking rules to

codes of conduct. Rules hold a society and

maintain communities from running wild – it is

the same in cooking. Rules in cooking ensure

safety, precision, and good taste.

Jake commented in his mise en place section that:

Instead of putting the many vegetables in

separate bowls and then running out of bowls, we

put them in neat piles on the counter, but it

created a small surface area to work.

In his Data section, Jake said:

I find myself worrying about these recipes before

lab. I feel like they are so much more complex

than they really are. After completing the lab, I

look back and think to myself that it really

wasn’t that hard and I could do it again much

easier and more efficiently the next time.

151 In Jake’s Comparison section, he remarked:

Of all the soups I tried, I really enjoyed the

two groups who added pistou to it - especially

one in particular, which had a lot of basil.

Finally, in his Reflection:

There are so many layers in French cooking, and

that is why it is so famous. And I could taste

the layers in the pistou and the curry – it was

nice to experience the culture through my

tastebuds.

Beth started her Mise en Place section by saying:

This recipe took a long time because of the

vegetable cuts, they all needed to be so uniform.

We used the rulers and this helped.

In her Data and Comparison sections, Beth acknowledged:

I didn’t think that when we combined the Potage

Julienne with the pistou that those two

substances belonged together. It was an eye

opening experience and I was afraid to taste it.

But once I saw the others I realized it was fine

and was eager to taste.

152 In her Reflection, Beth worries that she added too much garlic to her soup.

I thought that everyone would freak out and hate

it – even though I stuck to the recipe and only

added two cloves. Afterward, however, a friend in

the class told me that she favored our soup the

best and that made me feel proud.

Observations and comments. Although their practical skills were improving, Amy and I were also increasing the complexity of the labs. The

Mise en Place comments reflected their anxiety as we required greater exactness. At this stage, it was our intention to hone their thinking skills through the physical repetition and increase in precision of slicing and chopping. Like Dewey, we believed that in order to improve intellectual activity, we needed to increase motor activity (Tanner, 2004).

The Data and Comparison sections showed greater awareness for what other classmates thought about their preparations. The students were mindful and took every precaution for final presentations to be just right. This concern to meet others’ expectations was an encouraging observation for Amy and me. We reasoned this new attention to outcome correlated directly to an increased investment and ownership in the process.

153 Lesson Six: South Asia

Part three: What makes food pure? How do religious beliefs and rules shape what gets eaten?

The students read articles and listened to Amy talk about Indian customs and traditions with a focus on the purity and pollution aspects of food. And so at the sixth week, we moved from France to South Asia. This was a two-part lab that focused on the identification of Indian spices and herbs and particularly their use in sweet and savory dishes, and in proper cooking of rice. Over the two weeks, the groups were divided – some made Boon Kichri (rice and lentils) and Lemon Rice; the others made

Sambar (Indian vegetables) and Sweet Pongal, a rice dish with sugar, cardamom, cashews and raisins; and the others making the Chetinand

Pepper Chicken. When we sat down together at the conclusion of these labs, Amy demonstrated how to eat with one’s right hand. Most students were uncomfortable with the exercise, even a little annoyed. They all managed to get most of the meal in their mouths, however!

In Kim’s Mise en Place, she listed her myriad ingredients:

Our ingredient list was longer than usual and

included, ½ c toor dal lentils, ½ t turmeric

powder, 2 c chopped mixed vegetables (we used

potato, green pepper, and onion), 1 ½ T coriander

seeds, 3 t channa dal, 1 ½ t cumin, ½ t fenugreek

154 seeds, ½ t black pepper, 1 t black mustard seed,

2 cloves, 1 cinnamon stick, split, 2 red chilies,

½ c unsweetened coconut, 1 T tamarind paste

dissolved in warm water, 1 t jaggery (Indian

sugar), 1 T vegetable oil, 1 t whole black

mustard seed, and 3-4 fresh curry leaves.

Since we’ve been working with onions, potatoes

and peppers, we didn’t need to learn any new

chopping techniques. It was easier this time not

only because we’d done it before, but because

there was less emphasis on perfect chops and

complete uniformity in Indian cooking.

In Kim’s Data section, she comments:

I love Indian food, but up until this class, had

only been exposed to it in restaurants. I found

our Sambar to be delicious, expressing all the

complex flavors I recognize in Indian food that I

never imagined I could make on my own.

For some of the dishes we have made (the omelets,

for instance), taking too much liberty with how

to execute the dish can have devastating

155 consequences. We were able to tweak this recipe

according to what we saw fit, based on time

constraints and taste preferences.

Our vegetables were thoroughly cooked and had

absorbed the flavors of the stew. As usual I was

very pleased with how our dish came out and left

the lab full of good food!

In her Comparison sector, she observed:

It was interesting to compare how the cooking

techniques we used compare and contrast to the

Western methods we are more accustomed to.

The sambar our group and group #2 made had

similar flavors, but differed in consistency and

hotness. Our lentils were able to cook longer as

a result of our hijacking the only mortar and

pestle to grind our spices first.

The Chetinand Pepper Chicken was delicious. I

don’t typically cook with meat, even though I’m

not a vegetarian any longer . When I do, however,

I never cook meat on the bone. I’m not sure why,

156 I suppose it is an aversion to cooking something

that looks obviously dead. But it made a huge

difference in taste – it was moist and tender.

In Kim’s Reflection section she wrote:

We are trained to appreciate, expect, and repel

various flavor combinations. Our disapproval of

another culture’s cooking/eating practices can

translate to revulsion of those people as a

whole.

We are very quick to judge foreign habits, but

rarely step into the outsider’s shoes and look in

on our own eating practices. In doing the reading

about purity rituals and rules assigned to food

consumption in India, the objects and people that

would make eating impure sometimes resulting in

the need to change clothes yada yada yada, very

annoying. I actually got annoyed reading it

because I was putting my American self in that

situation and failing to realize that if I were

Indian, it would be normal to me. Use a fork is

normal to me and should I snag a cookie with my

left hand, no big deal.

157

I didn’t particularly enjoy eating with my hand

in lab, but it opened my eyes to the fact that

this is a result of training.

Unlike French cooking, Indian cooking is less rigorous in its form. The recipes are vaguer and require more imagination from the cook. Jake experienced the lack of boundaries right away and said in his mise en place section:

There were no instructions on how to cut the

vegetables, and we also had to substitute a few

vegetables because some were not available.

With the frying pan, we roasted the spices and

then ground them in the mortar and pestle.

In the Data section, he said:

I felt that our Sambar dish turned out very well,

but I did not know what to expect. It was clear

that compared to the French soup that we made

last week that the presentation was not its

selling point – it had a dark yellowish green

color and a thicker consistency.

158 I have always avoided Indian food because I

thought that I didn’t like spicy foods. I was

brought up on a bland diet, and it was my

understanding that if I could not handle mild

salsa, that I should avoid any cuisine that has a

chili pepper in the kitchen.

I really enjoyed our dish .

In the Comparison, Jake affirmed:

I felt the difference between the two Sambars

were very noticeable. Group #2 used two chili

peppers and it was spicier, but also it brought

out a sweetness. I found that group #2’s Sambar

gave me a more complex and moving tasting

experience.

The Kerala, like the Sambar, tasted better than

it looked. Unlike the Sambar, the Kerala didn’t

have a sweet flavor, and the spices were not as

overwhelming as the Sambar dish.

I usually end up bringing the plate to my mouth

and shoveling the rice in with a spoon . Mixing

159 the rice with the Sambar and the Kerala and using

my hand made eating the rice a lot easier.

Feeling the food adds another element to the

tasting experience. I was noticing details and

really paying attention to what I was eating. I

don’t know if I would ever totally convert to

using my hands, but for this dish and this

tasting experience, I would leave the fork at

home.

In his Reflection he noted:

In lecture, we were asked what makes something

pure and what makes something polluted. In our

culture, it isn’t as obvious to us as eating with

only our right hand or having a developed caste

system, but we do value purity and order.

Today in America we lack religious order, but we

still have a structured society.

We consider our food pure if it comes in a

cardboard box and is sealed in plastic. I

remember a couple of summers ago a woman was

buying produce from the farm stand I worked at

160 and asked if there was any lettuce without dirt

on it.

By creating this society that doesn’t see the

carrots in the dirt, that leaves the waste at the

end of the driveway, and has most of their food

cooked behind closed doors, we think of our food

as pure but we are confused.

I think many of us are overeating because we

don’t know who we are so we eat food that we

don’t know anything about. An empty stomach can

be detected, but a hungry soul is harder to see .

Beth’s Mise en Place was similar to the above entries, but she added some additional observations:

We worked very well this time. We prepared the

potatoes, green beans, and carrots first, since

they had to cook for about 20 minutes. While we

were waiting for that to cook, we blended the

coconut, peppers, cumin, ginger, and buttermilk

into a paste. After the vegetables were done

cooking, we added more buttermilk, peas, and the

paste and mixed them together over a low heat.

161 We left the dish on low heat until the class was

ready to share dishes. Before serving, we quickly

mixed in another splash of buttermilk .

In Beth’s Data section, she stated:

Our dish had perfectly cooked vegetables. This

exceeded my standards as we had previously been

either overcooking or undercooking our

vegetables .

The flavor was not something I cared for. I’ve

never had Indian food, so I didn’t really know

what to expect in the aspects of taste.

I really dislike the taste of coconut whether it

is fresh or artificially flavored, which may have

contributed to why I disliked the dish so much.

In other words the taste of our dish did not meet

my standards even though we did everything right

technically.

In her Comparison, she continued:

Compared to the other two groups that made Kerala

Aviyal, our vegetables were the most cooked. I

really did not like the taste of the Kerala

162 Aviyal. It was very hard for me to stomach. Two

bites were all I could manage.

I wasn’t a fan of the Sambar either.

I didn’t mind the flavor of the chicken, however,

the texture of the chicken thighs made the taste

unenjoyable. I think I would have enjoyed the

flavor if a chicken breast had been used as

opposed the thighs .

I am a fussy eater when it comes to my meats; if

there is any fat or fatty texture I am unable to

eat it without gagging.

Finally, in Beth’s Reflection:

The method of eating all of my food with my hand

was awkward. Yes, in the US we have some food

that is appropriate to eat with your hands, like

French fried or potato chips. However, when it

comes to eating a full meal, it is rare one ever

eats it with their hands only.

163 In our culture, as a toddler learns how to feed

themselves, it is normal to eat everything with

your hands and it is okay to make a mess.

However, signs that you are maturing and becoming

more sophisticated in our culture means being

used to utilizing silverware. I felt very dirty

getting food all over my hands.

Since Indian culture only allows one to eat with

their right hand, it was even more difficult to

break food down into smaller pieces using only

one hand. There was nothing about the process of

eating with my hands I liked. I eventually had to

go get a fork because I couldn’t handle it

anymore.

Observation and comments. By midterm, the building and layering of experience from previous weeks culminated and released a floodgate of great observations. The foreign qualities of cooking and eating Indian food – the rich colors, pungent aromas, and tastes – elicited powerful comments in all sections of the Lab Reports. The Mise en Place, Data, and

Comparisons were almost fully internalized.

164 In the Reflections, all students, some further along than others, began to question their status and practices within their own American culture. The Lab’s multi-dimensional facets for learning about the world helped them “engage with the human condition” and they inched their way toward Cook on the Rubric (Bowen, 2005, p. 2).

Lesson Seven: South Asia

As previously mentioned, we continued the Indian cooking lab in this lesson. We started to give them at least one recipe a week that we transmitted orally. I demonstrated Raita by spooning the yogurt into a bowl, chopping the tomatoes and cucumbers, roasting the spices and mixing it all with fresh herbs. As I made the dish, I gave them the measurements verbally and they wrote everything down quickly. As mentioned above, some groups made the Sweet Pongal, while others made the Boona Kichri (rice and lentils), and others made Lemon Rice.

There was one spice, called asafetida, also known as devil’s dung or food of the gods depending on your persuasion, that is, ground into white powder from the dried sap of the same plant. It has a very pungent smell and was an optional addition to the lemon rice.

Because we had been talking about caste systems and how levels ate in accordance with their stations, when we sat down to eat, Amy notified the untouchables to sit at one end of the table and the Brahmins

165 to sit at the other. Needless to say, many of the students were visibly disturbed by this action.

The students’ Lab Reports were packed full of wonderful observations this week. Kim wrote a long, six page lab this time and started with her Mise en Place. She said:

We began with the sweet pongal because the rice

required cooking and the riata was more or less

assembling. We crushed the cardamom seeds with

the side of our chef’s knife. We placed the milk,

rice, dal and cardamom in a sauce pan and turned

the heat to medium high.

Then we began to work on the raita. I heated the

griddle over medium high heat and after a minute

or so added the cumin, mustard seed, and chile.

I tossed the spices in the pan while they

browned. I found the smell and color change was

the easiest way to determine if the spices were

done.

The rice took longer and to resist ‘hovering’ and

removing the lid every few minutes to check it,

166 we decided to prepare the cashews and raisins for

the pongal. We browned them in the ghee.

In her Data section, Kim said:

I was surprised when the pongal did not conform

to my expectations. I had anticipated it being

creamier, in taste and appearance, and less

sweet. It was very tasty, however.

I found the cashews gave a nice earthy contrast

to the sweet rice and raisins. The cardamom

provided mysteriousness to the dish, and uncommon

flavor in Western cooking .

I really liked how this lab broke down some

barriers we have upheld for a long time in

American cooking, such as rice not constituting a

meal and strong spices and rice belong to savory

dishes. The Indian cooking we did in class

challenges these preconceptions casting a new

light on rice and all it can be!

I did enjoy the pongal, but I loved the raita.

Yogurt as a condiment is another idea that

167 challenges Americans’ notions of where food

belongs. When I first traveled to Europe, I was

blown away at how amazing their ‘regular’ yogurt

was compared to ours. Now I appreciate the ones

we have here in New England .

In Kim’s Comparison section, she looked at all the other rice dishes and observed:

The most surprising tastes came from the Boona

Kichri. The dish looked dry and bland, I mean it

just looked like lentils and rice. The flavor was

shocking. You could see pink undertones in #1’s

dish as they used more chilies than #3. The

cinnamon and cloves added a richness and

complexity where I expected dry earthy flavors.

The lemon rice was also very good. I can see why

it is used at weddings - it is so festive. I

don’t think the rest of the class liked it. The

asafetida brought out the lemony flavor of the

dish.

In her Reflections Kim wrote:

In reflecting on my own experiences and

interactions with migration, I can definitely

168 agree that food penchants and cooking practices linger long after other cultural institutions have been abandoned. Why does food persist? Food offers utility in this readjustment where customs such as language, dress, and schedules may only deter successful integration. But in the privacy of our own homes, we can revert to the comfortable flavors, tastes and textures of home.

Smells, with the incredible power for sending us back to other times and places, fill in the empty places left by absence.

Nearly every time I have been a guest in someone’s home who hails from a different culture, they have made some sort of effort to introduce me to their culture through food. I recall one morning in the home of the sister of my friend Jamal from Palestine. For breakfast, her husband decided to have a ‘cultural lesson.’

We ate seite e za’tar bread dipped in olive oil and then a mixture of thyme, salt, sumac, and sesame seed. It was filling and hearty, but very foreign.

169

We can think of migration as paralleling random

mutations in Darwin’s evolutionary theory,

causing unconventional changes leading to new

‘species,’ or cooking habits .

Kim is obviously an anthropology major with a clear understanding of the cultural nuances and her insights are well-grounded in the discipline. Jake, not as literate in anthropology, makes some fascinating observations as well. He, too, wrote volumes about the session and in his mise en place section described what he did:

The focus was more on learning new cooking

techniques and using ingredients and spices that

are not used in everyday American cooking.

While I was browning the lentils, my lab partner

heated the spices for the raita. We set half the

onions aside, added the rice, the browned

lentils, and the spices and cooked for three

minutes, and then we added the water and brought

the dish to a bowl. While this cooked, we

combined all the ingredients for the raita and

cleaned our station. When the rice and lentils

170 were done, we added the rest of the onions and

salt.

In his Data section, he recapped some thoughts:

Our results were influenced by factors similar to

past labs, such as being prepared coming into

class with prior cooking knowledge, in class

instruction on cooking techniques, but this week

our results for one of our dishes was influenced

by our ability to follow oral instructions.

I was more skeptical about the raita than any

other recipe we’ve made. I have the typical

American image of yogurt in my head, and the

thought of adding tomatoes and cucumbers to

something that I had added bananas and granola in

earlier did not appeal to me.

I realized that I have a sweet diet of fruit,

bread, and apples. The raita was just what I had

been craving without even knowing it. I really

appreciated the plain yogurt as almost a carrier

for the texture of the vegetables and the spices.

171 A complexity to the dish that I noticed was the

contrasting tastes of the cucumbers and the

tomatoes, something that I had never really paid

attention to.

I am a visual learner and this dish was a success

because many of the things that I would stumble

on in a written recipe were answered in this oral

recipe.

The rice and lentils took a little longer to cook

then we predicted so we were not able to try the

dish before setting it down for the rest of the

class. I was nervous that it was going to be

undercooked, but I thought it turned out great.

If I made the lentils and rice again, I would

cook more onions and possibly add another

cinnamon stick.

In Jake’s Reflection, he confirmed :

The raita dish was a good example of how recipes

can still vary even when someone demonstrates how

to make it. I varied in taste with some floating

172 in yogurt others just coated - some with lots of chilies, others with not much .

I tried the lemon rice dish, and I feel bad saying that I could not tell the difference between the one that had asafetida and the one that didn’t.

The Boona Kichri was by far my favorite dish, and

I liked the other groups’ better than ours because you could really taste the cinnamon and cloves. When we compared cooking techniques, they said their cinnamon had been cooking at the bottom of the pan and had turned brown and ours had not.

I’ve never had rice pudding before so I did not know what to expect. I enjoyed both samples, but the one that was moist and had a sweet syrupy look seemed to carry the jaggery flavor and made the dish seem less ‘ricey.’

173 In Jake’s Reflection, he recognized that:

Food is the last thing to go in migration, but

land is the first thing to go, and with the land

goes so much of the meaning of what that food is.

It is hard for Americans to understand, because

we aren’t growing our food and most of our

festivals and traditions are not connected to the

land.

I am fascinated by cultures that still rely on

agriculture for their livelihood and that have

long embedded history and customs with their

crops and their land. If ‘cooking is where nature

meets culture’ (Ray, p. 47), then what happens to

the food when part of that is lost?

What is the meaning to the final dish when you

relied on Rachael Ray for your culture and

Hannafords for your nature?

Migrating cultures can adjust. They can

substitute brown sugar for jaggery, yellow

heirlooms for a Beefsteak tomato, or pasteurized

174 skim milk for goat’s milk. In doing this, they are losing the original taste, meaning and their culture. They can carry the seeds, but they can’t bring the soil and agriculture, and a large part of the culture is lost.

Somewhere in my life I decided that I wanted to be taught a skill, and that I would rather have a degree in welding than in biology. I have been fighting with myself for these last months on whether I wanted a college degree at all, and I haven’t even tackled the dilemma on what I should major in. This class has taught me a lot about myself, from my learning style, to what I enjoy learning about and the balance I need in my life.

Three credits of my life should be in reading, in class discussion, and stretching my mind, and one credit should be in learning new skills such as cooking. It has become clear to me now that I want to go to school, and making that decision has lifted so much anxiety off of my everyday life and I’m able to focus on other issues.

175

My ‘migration’ still continues, but I can carry these

recipes and skills that I have learned in this class

wherever I go.

Beth’s Report was deeply insightful. She started her Mise en Place section and said:

I forgot that we would be cooking a second dish,

which the recipe was given to us orally. I

initially intended to utilize both halves of the

counter to make the Boona Kichri solely.

However, once we received the second recipe, we

decided to split the dishes and one made each.

In her Data section, she notes:

We started off lightly burning our lentils for

the Boona Kichri, this was not how I expected to

start off. However, I was surprised by how the

darker colored lentils gave our dish a really

nice color in the end, but it was the dominant

taste and slightly ruined the taste. It is

amazing how the preparation of one ingredient can

alter the flavor of the entire dish.

176 Our raita came out fairly sour. I didn’t know how

it was supposed to taste never having it before.

However, compared to the spiciness of lab last

week, it was a nice refresher!

In her Comparison, Beth declared;

We started off by tasting the raita and the lemon

rice. I tried our raita, which, had just the 2

chili peppers for a little flavor and I tried #3

that decided to grind up the pepper. I liked the

#3 better than ours because they blended the

pepper and it took away the sour flavor.

To finish the meal, we ended with the sweet

pongal; this was my favorite dish we made this

week. I tried #5 and #2 and #2 had a more sugary

taste. This was due to the fact that they added

more sugar than #5. Theirs was also a lot

creamier. #5 had a sweeter taste, even though

theY used less sugar. It also appeared that they

had more raisons and oil added to their dish.

In Beth’s Reflection, she clearly observed:

In thinking about migration, I can’t help but

think about traveling . I feel that when Americans

177 travel, they tend to travel to ‘Americanized’ tourist friendly areas and don’t really get a real feel for different cultures. We expect other countries to have similar practices and eat similar foods.

I feel in order to get a real feel for a country, you must go to a non-tourist area.

I often feel displacement when eating at other people’s homes. I am very picky when it comes to what I eat, yet when I am out of my comfort zone,

I tend to eat things I don’t like and try to mold my action to fit in with the place I am in, in fear of offending someone.

I usually prefer to go to a place that I am familiar with because it’s comfortable and I know

I like the food.

Though this class has forced me to try new things, I still am not that adventurous in my eating.

178

Observations and comments. By Lesson Seven, it was clear that the empirical sections of the Lab Report were second nature. They had become comfortable with the practical aspects of cooking. Their Mise en

Place was no longer an issue of angst, their knife handling was better, and cooperation with one another notably improved. The Data and

Comparison sections were full of observations using careful vocabulary to describe their palate and olfactory experiences.

This new found confidence allowed them to subordinate the practical skills of cooking to make more multifaceted connections between themselves and other cultures in their Reflection sections.

The students were digging deeper, including multiple perspectives, as the simple act of cooking brought their honest reflections to the surface.

Instead of struggling with the practical skills, they now began to struggle to understand culture and their place in it. This important movement to intellectualize what they were practically experiencing is evident in their above passages.

Lesson Eight: South/African American

Part four: How does where you come from shape what you eat now? “You are what you eat,” is an old adage and in this lesson, we wanted to enlighten the students on food migration and its effect on

179 American culture. In this lab, Amy and I deliberately became vaguer with recipe instructions. Instead of giving the students measurements right next to ingredients, we wrote down ingredients only. The dishes we planned used all of the same spices and herbs from previous week, but in different configurations. Again, we divided the students into groups and instructed some groups to create a Vegetarian Orange Rice Pilau, others to make a

Chicken Curry Stew, and everyone to prepare a Moroccan Carrot and

Pepper Salad.

We were now more than halfway through the semester and I noted some group fatigue. Perhaps because the labs were no longer novel or of academic pressures outside of class, Amy and I decided to invite guest tasters. We invited individuals with authentic connections to the food we cooked for the rest of the semester. We also adjusted the lessons.

Following the Dewey Lab teachers lead, we gave the students more freedom in their food preparation. If they wanted to change aspects of the recipe or even make something different, we let them experiment.

Our guest taster this week was a professor in the Counseling department at UVM. She is a native of Kenya and an excellent cook.

Two weeks before the class, we asked her to send us the recipes for the chicken and rice dishes she planned to prepare. She wrote back and said she had no recipes; they had all been orally transmitted from her

180 “aunties” over the generations, but that she would try and write them down. She did write recipes, but without any measurements. Amy and I thought this was fine as we were trying to get the students to develop their intuitive cooking abilities.

When our guest professor arrived, she did not demonstrate any technique, but talked to the students about the recipes. She brought with her her famous “red curry” found only in Kenya. She relayed to them a migration story about Great Britain’s arrival in Kenya, after their colonization of India. The British planned to construct a railroad from the head waters of the Nile to the west coast and brought Indian workers to perform the work. The Indians stayed in Kenya and greatly influenced the

Kenyan cuisine with Indian curries. Ironically, Kenyans today believe curry is part of their own ancestral heritage.

The professor, a very calm, organized person, had done her best with the recipe instructions. But as the students started to cook, she became visibly agitated. They were not executing the recipe as she had anticipated because her recipes were too vague. Where Amy and I walked calmly around the kitchen adjusting and monitoring, she moved quickly, grabbed ingredients, or a bowl, or a frying pan and attempted to show correct technique. She admonished one group for not mixing the rice in a folding manner and grabbed the bowl away, stirring it correctly

181 and lightly scolded another for not chopping their carrots small enough.

The stressed teams just stared blankly. Finally, Amy and I took her aside and explained that the students were not seasoned cooks; they made mistakes all the time; that we never expected perfection; and that our intention was to have fun and let the situation unfold naturally. By the end of the class, our previously agitated guest professor laughed and joked with the students and commended them on their wonderful tasty dishes.

After class, she came up to Amy and me and bowed. She said that never, in all her years of teaching and counseling, had she felt so out of control. She said, “This experience has made me reassess my teaching practices. The atmosphere you have created is truly remarkable and I have learned much today.”

The students were remarkable in this lab and continued to grow in their experience. In Kim’s Mise en Place section, she acknowledged the lack of recipe definition:

Despite not knowing specific measurements for

ingredients in this lab, I wasn’t that worried.

Just make it up as you go along! This lab turned

out to be my favorite so far .

Once we listened to [the guest professor’s] story

about the dishes, and she had walked us through

182 the chicken recipe, I immediately realized that some aspects of this dish went against my cooking intuition. We started by placing the skinned chicken thighs on large, hot sauté pans without adding any fat. Yet once the chicken began to brown I saw how much sense this made because the chicken does have a lot of fat of its own.

After adding the vegetables, our next step was to begin infusing flavor with spices by adding the red curry. (I made the dish the following night and its flavor was no where near the depth of complexity as it did in class because we used the

Kenyan curry and I used the common yellow blend found in supermarkets here.

For the salad, we decided to slice the carrot lengthwise and then cut small slivers horizontally so I was making little half moon shapes.

After the chicken had cooked for about another 10 minutes, we added the tomatoes, which we had

183 small-diced. [Our guest professor] suggested we

add a half-cup of water or so to help break down

the vegetables; as it cooked out, it would create

a thickened sauce.

The [guest professor] also brought with her the

fiery hot chili powder that her family makes and

we added a little of this as well.

For Kim’s Data section, she commented on her dishes.

Our chicken was moist and tender and absorbed the

flavors of all the spices.

In the States, we are very accustomed to cooking

meat and vegetables separately and serving them

as complimentary dishes. As [the guest professor]

explained in the beginning, it is economical and

time saving to combine nutrient requirements into

a dish such as this one.

The cilantro was essential for both adding a

fresh burst of flavor to deeper, smoky aromas of

the meat and stew, and also for its bright color

as a garnish.

184

In Kim’s Comparison section, she wrote:

With every meal we cook in class, I realize how

many seemingly insignificant decisions that go

into a dish ensure each and every time the same

recipe will come out slightly different. We were

all given the same ingredients, but this lab was

liberal in the sense that we were allowed lots of

leeway in how we balanced those ingredients.

One group’s pilau was a more vibrant yellow and

another’s was duller, more brownish tinge.

The carrot salad I also enjoyed very much. What I

most enjoy about this class is finding new ways

to combine everyday ingredients so it is as if I

am re-discovering carrots or onions for the first

time .

In her Reflection, Kim commented:

Globalization is a new way to talk about the

movement of people and ideas around the globe.

185 When we did the dietary recall exercise in class,

I was amazed that nothing I had eaten in the past

24 hours was native to North America. Dairy,

grapes and cattle are not native to North

America.

How people use food to define themselves in

foreign places is extremely interesting,

especially when that food shifts from simply

defining a people to defining a place. As [our

guest professor] explained, when Indian workers

were brought to Africa to construct a railway,

they brought with them their culinary traditions.

We referred to the dish we made in class as

Kenyan, yet many of the spices were used

originated in South Asia, and the peppers,

tomatoes and chilies in the New World .

Jake wanted clarity in his Mise en Place from our guest professor’s lesson and wrote:

This week’s recipe did not have many

instructions, so we had to make sure that we know

the recipes before we came into lab in case we

had questions for the guest cook. Before I came

186 to lab, I wrote down any measurements that were

not listed in the ingredients, but that were

mentioned later on in the directions. I also

wrote down any questions that I had; for example,

if three and a half glasses of water was actually

cups of water.

Once the oil heated, we added the onions, garlic,

and red curry (at least I thought it was), the

pilau mix, and the salt and mixed the ingredients

in the pan. Then we added the rice and were ready

to let the rice cook with the spices, but [our

guest professor] came by and said that we should

be adding the vegetables.

We ended up not being able to fit the vegetables

and then had to transfer everything to another

pan.

In the Data section, Jake said:

This week we were able to taste other dishes

before the final tasting, and it wasn’t until we

were comparing other dishes that my opinions of

our dish really came out. In each recipe, we

187 misread a part of the recipe that turned out to be pretty crucial to the final taste.

I noticed that our dish did not have the yellow, curry color that the other dishes had. A couple of times while we were cooking, [our guest professor] stopped by and asked if we had added the red curry to the dish, and I had to tell her each time that I had added the curry powder. I didn’t realize that I had added the red pepper powder (very red in color) instead of the red curry powder (very yellow in color). Our dish was a different color. It still tasted good.

The error in the salad was that the recipe said to add salt to taste, but we must have had some measured salt in a dish left over, and ended up adding about two tablespoons of salt. I didn’t realize we did it wrong until we again did the comparisons. I liked it anyway.

188 I liked the appearance of our salad, it was a

nice combination of French, uniform cuts and the

bright, yellow curry.

In Jake’s Comparison section, he goes on to say:

Since we had no recipe, some groups thinly sliced

the carrots and peppers, while others just peeled

the carrots and made thick, round slices.

Some groups garnished the dish with parsley and

added pepper for presentation.

Jake’s Reflection, he wrote about the movie watched in class on the

Columbian exchange of food.

Many of the classes that I have taken and books

that I have read have touched on parts of the

Columbian exchange and its influence, but the

movie we watched this week made the point that

food and agriculture is the center and power of

any civilization.

Today, we think that the most powerful country is

the one with the most guns and the largest

government, and we like to forget that even with

189 all this power, we are still at the mercy of

nature.

Beth’s Mise en Place section starts with:

After finishing the cuts for the pilau, we moved

on to cutting up the vegetable need for the

salad.

I was impressed at how quickly the spices cooked.

Since the recipe was so vague on how long to cook

the spices, I had to use my judgment on when I

felt it was done.

In her Data Results section, she said:

Though we got off to a slow start, both our

dishes came out better than I expected. In the

beginning, I was chopping the carrots too big for

the pilau and, therefore, I felt stressed when I

had to go through and chop them all down to

smaller pieces. I was concerned we would run out

of time with this setback; however, once the

carrots were done we sped through the rest quite

quickly.

190 I felt we added too much salt to the pilau and it

masked the spiciness of the dish. I feel when

making a native dish, it is important to try to

obtain a similar flavor, rather than covering it

up with salt.

In Beth’s Comparison section, she wrote:

Some people had small cut vegetables, and others

like us had longer and thinner cuts. I also

noticed that some of the groups that prepared the

chicken decided to add some of their red peppers

to their salad. It added a sweeter flavor. I also

noticed when comparing our salad to #6 that

though they didn’t add any red peppers, their

salad still had a sweeter taste.

I tasted the chicken curry of groups #6 and #8.

Group #6 stood out more to me because theirs

definitely had more pasty consistency and also

tasted much spicier than group #6.

Finally, in Beth’s Reflection, she noticed:

In this week’s lab, I learned that salad does not

always mean there is lettuce or some type of

green involved. When I read that we were doing a

191 salad and saw there was not lettuce, I got confused. It made me realize that in our culture, we are accustomed to eating our salads with lettuce/greens, when in other cultures, this may not be the norm. It made me realize how naïve I really am about the food practices outside of my culture .

I also noticed that though we have been using the same spices for the last few weeks, the flavor of the dishes change. I have found the smaller and more ground up the spice, the more powerful the flavor and the less time a spice spends in the dish, the less flavor.

Though I find it very uncomfortable to eat certain type of dishes with my hand, I think it would have been an interesting experience to eat the stew and salad with our fingers.

I think this would have taken me further out of my comfort zone.

192 Observations and comments. The guest professor created an interesting teaching dynamic for Amy and me. Her initial need to control every facet of the student activity offered a perspective on our own roles as teachers in the Food Lab. We realized that the appearingly chaotic nature of the activity we had created in the lab was actually a group of very organized and engaged students. Our carefully designed Lab

Report had created a structure that allowed students the freedom to experiment, but within rather precise boundaries. This insight reinforced our ability to play the role of facilitator; to watch, listen and ask questions because in essence, for us, the student interest drove the activity. For

Amy and me, this laboratory method fostered not only this ability to self- reflect, but an independence of thought. It asked us to understand as much as possible about the learning situation, and to respond to student activity primarily in light of that understanding. Interestingly, when an observer in the Laboratory School pressed Dewey about the apparent chaos of his kitchen lab, Dewey’s response was to defend it not as the optimum learning situation, “but as a necessary phase in learning how students learn” (Bickman, 2000, p. 2).

Lesson Nine: South/African American

In Lesson Nine, we continued our migration cooking experience and followed from African slave route to the southern part of the United

193 States. We invited a Middlebury College guest professor/taster, an authentic southerner from Tennessee, and prepared a traditional southern feast of greens, fried okra and cornbread.

In the demonstration, Amy identified some of the ingredients. The students handled the collard greens and compared them to the mustard greens. Many in the group had never seen okra; and when she sliced the okra open to reveal its mucous-like inside, they were slightly repulsed.

When I showed them the salt pork with its thick layer of blanched hide sitting atop a thick fatty piece of meat, they erupted with revulsion!

The students prepared two different kinds of corn bread - one savory (no sugar) and authentically southern, and a sweet New England version. They boiled collard and/or mustard greens with salt pork and made with either fried okra or okra Creole with tomatoes and corn. Our guest professor had helped with the recipe development, but was not a

“cook” like the previous professor. He walked around, lightly advised, but mostly talked about his experience growing up in the south.

Kim started her Mise en Place section by remarking:

Although this lab required us to make three

separate dishes, utilizing three separate

techniques, sauté, stew, and bake, I found it to

be the easiest lab we’ve done thus far to

organize and execute.

194

We began by stemming the greens, placing them in the saucepan with 1 C of water and the salt pork, turning it on high and covering. Once this had come to a boil, we turned the heat down to medium and low and left it. No timer was necessary because ideally we would have, according to Tom, cooked the collards for 10 hours!

Once we creamed the butter and added the sugar, I added each egg one at a time, fully incorporating the first before I add the second. When the mixture was light and fluffy, we added the flour mixture. We stirred to combine dry and wet ingredients. The cornmeal was added last and folded in as opposed to the vigorous stirring needed to cream together the other ingredients.

When the oil began to ripple, we added the chopped onions for the Creole. I turned the heat down slightly and let it cook, stirring frequently for about fifteen minutes. When they were tender and caramelized, we added the okra

195 and cooked it for 10 minutes. Once the okra had

begun to soften, we added the tomatoes and corn

and let the Creole cook on medium heat for

fifteen minutes or so.

In Kim’s Data section, she continued:

Going into lab, I was wary of the Creole recipe.

My mom is from the south, so I grew up eating

fried okra, but I had never had it another way

because of the suspicious texture. Because we

cooked the okra initially on high heat, I believe

this dried them out a little. The flavors were

fabulous.

I tried to tell myself before class that I would

probably like the true Southern cornbread better

than the Yankee version. Yet this was not the

case, I thought our Yankee was awesome. It was

cake-like, sweet, dense, but fluffy.

The bright yellow color, I assume a result of the

generic corn meal we used, conformed to my

expectations of what cornbread should look like,

196 as opposed to the duller, grainier appearance of

the Southern recipe.

As for the collard greens, I think this will be

my first lab experience where I will say I was

not thrilled with the results. The greens were

bitter, but that is not what bothered me. They

reminded me of cheap road food I’ve had while

traveling in the south. Because they are cooked

so long, they take on a brownish hue and don’t

look fresh either.

In Kim’s Comparison section, she compared the three Creole dishes:

Despite having only a few simple ingredients the

three creoles had very different flavors. I think

these differences can be best attributed to

cooking times.

We cooked our onion for a long time, about 15 and

20 minutes, before adding the okra. This gave our

dish a distinctly sweet flavor and darker color

than the others.

197 I noticed that both other groups who made the

Creole used more than one tomato and this gave

theirs a more stew-like consistency, whereas ours

was drier more of a stir-fry.

I did not dislike the Southern cornbread, but its

savory flavors did not mesh with my ideas

associated with the name cornbread. Perhaps if it

had been called something different, I would have

liked it more thoroughly.

I did prefer the mustard greens to the collard

greens, but I had basically the same opinion of

them. I found their flavor more appetizing, but

the first groups’ that I tried had not been

washed well enough and I bit into crunchy sand.

After that I wasn’t really interested in trying

every group’s greens.

In Kim’s Reflection, she talked about migration and access:

Many of the recipes we’ve made in past lab

originated overseas, in France, in India, and in

Kenya. However, these dishes did not always seem

exotic in that they utilized many of the same

198 ingredients we have grown accustomed to in our

‘total access’ world.

This past week when we learned that we would be cooking with okra, the class reacted negatively with fear, trepidation, and disgust. Okra is technically foreign, originating in Africa.

Okra is steeped in the African American cooking traditions of the American South, a culture that few, in any of the members of our class, have ties to. In this way, we see how cultural practices mediate the transit of foods and recipes even when the physical barriers of transportation become almost nil.

It could be argued that okra, with its somewhat slimy interior, just didn’t gain popularity because people didn’t like it. Yet, we can more readily explain these preferences as food serving as a link to one’s cultural identity. Often people adopt food preferences when they are ready to tell others something about themselves.

199

A clear example of this is vegetarianism/ veganism. By choosing a meatless diet, you are aligning yourself with others who choose the same, in essence associating with a certain lifestyle that carries other implications besides simply, ‘I don’t eat meat.’

Northerners’ apprehensions in trying Southern foods probably go much deeper than something negative when they heard okra. We can cite a long history of animosity between the North and the

South and this may explain why foods and tastes have not so easily moved across the Mason Dixon line.

It is quite interesting that this relatively short distance, but wide cultural gap, would make us more inclined to try foods from around the world over ones found right here in the USA.

Jake started his Mise en Place by explaining his process:

My lab partner and I made the authentic southern cornbread, the collard greens, and the fried

200 okra. When we came in, we set up our cutting

board, our knives, our bleach bucket, our sauté

pan to fry the okra, and a pot to boil the

greens. We collected our ingredients from the

center table and sat down for our instructions .

We chopped the okra into small, one inch pieces

and set them aside. In a plastic bag, we added a

¼ C of cornmeal and ¼ C of flour. In a heated

sauté pan, we added vegetable oil and also the

okra pieces in the plastic bag and coated them

with the mixture.

In his Data section, Jake talked of the opportunity to cook with the guest professor:

My partner and I were privileged because we were

guided through most of our recipes by our

visiting, authentic southern cook. We made the

authentic southern cornbread and our fried okra

followed [our guest professor’s] grandmother’s

recipe rather than the one that was written out

for us.

201 Even though I knew that the cornbread that we made was not the Yankee cornbread that I am used to, I was still expecting to taste something sweet. It came as a kind of shock when the cornbread tasted more like polenta than cake, but after the initial surprise, I was able to accept and enjoy it.

The fried okra was not slimy and did not remind me of my last okra experience. I think by substituting half of the cornmeal for the flour, it made the mixture stick to the okra better and created a sweeter, fattier taste.

I rarely let myself enjoy the taste of fat, and throughout this taste experience, I would stop any thought that have been drilled into me about fat and just enjoyed this authentic, southern meal.

I realized that you can make a tough skinned, slimy pod taste good by knowing how to cook and add flavor to it. In this lab, I learned how

202 another culture adds flavor to food, and I have

never really noticed that when I cook at home, I

do not have a technique for adding flavor to

food.

In Jake’s Comparison section, he compared the cornbreads:

I found it hard to compare the Southern cornbread

and the Yankee cornbread because they tasted so

different and it was hard to imagine that they

both could be considered cornbread. In the

Yankee, I had to use my imagination to taste the

corn, compared to the Southern bread where I

could feel and taste the corn.

This was mentioned by many in the class, but I

think the Yankee could have had half the sugar

and still tasted good.

The okra Creole dish was my favorite in this lab.

I preferred #6 Creole because it was sweeter and

had a pleasing texture and appearance compared to

#4. Group #4 added Tabasco sauce and I thought it

masked the taste of the vegetables and was too

hot.

203

The difference between our fried okra and other

group’s okra was pretty extreme due to cooking

techniques. While we thickly sliced our raw okra,

other groups blanched the whole pod, coated them

in cornmeal, and fried the pod whole. I could see

how okra has gotten the reputation of as slimy

and stringy because those are the words that I

used to describe the okra that was fried whole.

I made myself acknowledge and accept this mouth

feel, and decided that I still like the okra, but

I preferred the okra that we made.

In Jake’s Reflection, he had a legitimate question about his food experience.

The truth is, if you are traveling in search for

something untouched and authentic, the

preformatted ideas you have and the search itself

destroys the authenticity.

So how do you have an authentic food experience

as a traveler? I guess the only way to do it

204 would be to arrive at a house unannounced just as the family is sitting down for dinner.

We are able to buy avocados and strawberries in

January. I think we are moving so fast and so is our food that we sometimes forget to stop and experience the authentic moments that do occur in our lives. In lab this week, I was taught how to fry okra from a true, southerner who was taught by his grandmother.

I remember ordering a sandwich in Wales and finding three leaf clovers instead of lettuce. In

Iceland, my cooking partner was from Italy, and even though he was a grown man, whenever we cooked, he would talk about his mother’s cooking and how much he missed it. I think we need to capture these moments, whether they are taste experiences or environmental, and try and move away from contrived or created authentic experiences.

205 Beth’s Mise en Place spoke about her cornbread experience as well:

The cornbread was easy to prepare and took little

time. When stirring, I intended to get all the

lumps out and through that, you had to stir until

everything was perfectly smooth. This was not the

case with cornbread. I was corrected. I was

unaware that there was any such thing as over

stirring until this lab .

Beth’s Data section, she commented:

Our lab went surprisingly fast. My partner and I

have the rhythm down now and we usually zip

through preparations and such. I was surprised

that our dishes came out exceptionally well. I

was impressed with how little stirring the

cornbread needed to mix in all the ingredients.

Since we were given the option to leave our okra

whole or chop it into little pieces, we decided

to chop it into smaller pieces to fry. I feel

like this gave our okra the chance to absorb more

flavor and cook quicker.

206 In Beth’s Comparison section, she observed:

The first thing I noticed when looking at all the

dishes, were the different colors. Some like ours

were dark green, almost brown color, and others

were still bright green. I think this had to do

with the amount of each leaf type.

When comparing the Creole stews, I noticed that

#8 had a nice blend of flavor, with a slight

dominant onion taste. #6 had a strong tomato

taste, and it was obvious their vegetables had

been steamed longer.

The biggest difference I noticed in the fried

okra was the size – was it left whole or was it

diced. Our diced dish was crisper and had more

flavor.

The cornbreads tasted completely different too.

We made the Southern stone ground and I found

that ours was very grainy and flaky. It was much

more bitter. The Yankee was more of a dessert

while ours would be better with a meal.

207

Finally in Beth’s’ Reflection, she commented that:

The meal we prepared in this lab was my favorite

thus far. I think it is a combination of we were

moving toward more familiar means of preparation

and combinations of tastes. More ‘Americanized’

dishes are what I am used to eating.

I have never had any of the dishes that we have

prepared prior to the lab. However, since fried

foods with a lot of fat and/or salt are common in

the US, it is that that I found most familiar.

We had a nice combination of salty, sweet, and

spicy.

This idea of food availability and seasonality

became prevalent to me in this lab. These dishes

were common in the South because this is the type

of food that was available.

The idea of food based on class stuck out to me

also. I hadn’t thought about the stone ground

cornbread and okra being considered slave food

208 until we had to sit in different parts of the

classroom afterward. If it weren’t for slavery,

the United States wouldn’t have been introduced

to okra at all.

Observations and comments. The students understood African slavery and migration of food by cooking their way there. At this point in time, the Mise en Place, Data and Comparison sections were flawlessly executed. They behaved like well-ordered chefs in their ingredient gathering, preparation, knife handling, and presentation of final dishes.

Their Reflections revealed a seamless ability to connect their experience with the experiences of others. No doubt, Kim and Jake intellectually understood cultural identity and struggle with it before they signed up for our class. However, cooking, tasting and then describing soul food gave them context to experience southern culture and a small bit of the African-American experience. Surprisingly, Beth came to class without much prior knowledge of southern culture, but through the cooking activity, changed her viewpoint. Her final comments were oddly encouraging as we watched the light bulb go on and she began to appreciate cultural differences.

209 Lesson Ten: Mexican Cuisine – Corn, Identity and Myth

Lecture topic: Comida vs. Alimento. In this final lab, not only did we have a guest Mexican cook and UVM professor from the Anthropology department, but the Burlington Free Press crew attended to capture this most unusual college “classroom.” We continued the lessons of migration and focused on Mexican cuisine. Our recipes, with a focus on new world ingredients, consisted of making different kinds of corn tortillas and their toppings of black bean and tomatillo salsas. With photographers nearby, the professor demonstrated how to mix the masa harina (corn flour) with water to make the tortilla dough and then how to press them by hand and in the tortilla press. He then went over the heated comals to lightly toast the tortillas. He also showed them how to make variations of the flat tortilla by folding up the edges for a memela and in a triangular pouch for a tetela . After he blended the salsas and allowed the students to taste the mixtures, they were off to their stations.

For one of the readings, Amy instructed the students to read excerpts from Esteva’s and Prakash’s (1988) provocative book, Grassroots

Postmodernism, in anticipation of the Mexican food lab. These authors make a distinction between the concept of comida, the meal shared within one’s community; and alimento , literally to eat without connection to land, family or self. They posit that the modern individual self is created

210 as much by the food s/he is fed from birth, as s/he is by the schools books, cars, and other manufactured “goods” produced. They state that when industrialized societies enter their local grocery stores, dining halls or restaurants, buying goods from any and every part of the earth, motivated solely by the desire to get the best return on the dollar, they have become what Berry called “industrial eaters” (Berry, 1989, p. 126;

Esteva & Prakash, 1988, p. 29). “Industrial eaters are disconnected from the most basic human act: the communal breaking of bread” (Esteva &

Prakash, p. 52). The guest professor explained that women in the

Oaxacan pueblo he just visited made fresh tortillas three times a day. He said it was a long deep tradition and implied that, “You loved your family.”

For this lab, the students were not required to complete a full Lab

Report. Amy asked for the Reflection Section only and asked them to comment on their lab experience and answer the question – Did the students’ experience of culture in the labs make a difference in their learning?

Kim notes the difference between alimento and comida:

The dichotomy Estevez establishes between comida

and alimento introduces interesting issues

surrounding poverty, affluency and the modern

consumer. Implicit in his distinction between the

211 two worlds where foods are experienced is an economic division.

I have always associated Mexican tortillas with the flat, usually flour based wraps found in the grocery store. I was very excited to make authentic tortillas in class; I expected them to conform to my idea of tortillas, only to taste better. My first surprise in lab came when [our guest cook] made the demo tortilla and it was much smaller than I imagined. Their smell, texture and color were also much different than anything I’d tasted before, even in good Mexican restaurants.

This tortilla recipe also demonstrated the importance of oral transmission of knowledge.

Had I tried to make tortillas simply from reading a recipe, as opposed to watching [our guest cook] demonstrate, I never would have been able to achieve the same results.

212 I also think it is important to note here that a

cooking show could not have replaced the

experience of watching someone in person – I will

never forget how to make tortillas after

listening to [our guest cook’s] presentation and

making them myself right after.

We would not likely find the American poor making

the tortillas, salsa, or bean paste that we made

in class. These dishes require time and energy

inputs, the opportunity costs of which may be

lost hours of wage pay.

A newfound interest in comida as opposed to the

unknown alimento is not surprising. The food we

eat becomes a way to wear our politics on our

sleeve, and participating in these campaigns is

often reserved for the wealthy and educated.

Finding time for comida in America’s market

economy should not be reserved for the rich with

time and energy to invest in food as a hobby.

When Kim answered Amy’s final question about the lab experience, she summarizes:

213 The experience in this class would definitely not be the same if we did not have the lab component.

How could we have a class about food and culture without actually cooking and eating food? I learned so much just about taste and technique that I would never have understood without the lab experience.

It was so interesting to see how everyone’s experience differed in lab. Everyone had the same recipes, but with a few changes, either in ingredients or in technique, the dish could be so different.

It was such a complete learning experience that I will never forget. Memories are matched with food; what I learned through this food experience will stick in my head like oatmeal. In fact, it may actually be impossible to forget what I learned. What a great feeling

Jake opened his Reflection and commented:

If I lived in Mexico and I was making tortillas three times a day, after a few years, I would

214 start to wonder if there was an easier way. My

American mind would think that instead of every household making tortillas three times a day, why doesn’t the best tortilla maker get paid to make tortillas while the rest of us invest our time into other things like basket weaving or corn growing.

Even though this is basic economic structure, it doesn’t factor into things like mothers wanting to make their own tortillas for their family and the joy they receive from seeing their family sit down together three times a day to eat their own homemade tortillas.

[Our guest cook] said that there was no one way to make a tortilla, and that the amount of attention that you put into rounding the ends and flattening with your hands expresses how much you love your family. It’s interesting comparing the ideology to what we were taught at the beginning of the class with French cuisine. I felt more uncomfortable and uptight making the French eggs

215 and soup, but in the Mexican cuisine, I felt more

freedom to move around and mess up a few things.

In answering the question about the practical experience in the lab, Jake responds:

I have drilled into my head that I need to be

taught a trade, to learn a set of skills that I

can apply when I leave school. I feel that I

could always read a set of books, but I cannot

recreate the setting of being an apprentice to a

skilled professional. I do not know where I came

up with these sets of ideas, or why I’m having

such a hard time accepting that I want a liberal

education .

I have found that this class combined the two

sets of learning, and I feel like I am leaving

the class with improved cooking techniques from

other cultures and for every day use. This class

has been the most diverse academic class I have

ever taken. I have learned cooking skills, taste

skills, groups skills, along with all the

knowledge about food and why we eat the things we

eat. We were able to understand and experience

216 the cultures by the food they eat, which besides

actually living with another culture is one of

the closest ways to understand another culture.

In Beth’s final Reflection, she commented that:

When first going into lab, I felt that our

tortilla making process was going to be

stressful. During the demonstration, I was

convinced that our tortillas wouldn’t be round

enough or that we would burn them for leaving

them on the high heat too long. However, I found

the process quite easy and enjoyable.

Beth then talked about what she has learned:

With cooking class, I have learned to be patient.

If things don’t go exactly how you plan for them

to go, you just have to make adjustments and move

on. I’ve also learned that every type of food

takes different amounts of preparation,

ingredients combination, and different cooking

times.

I have also learned that even if you are making

the same dish, some of the times differ.

Therefore, I have learned to be patient and

217 didn’t get impatient when working in the lab this

week.

The making of tortillas in lab, I can relate to

the idea of comida because we were making enough

tortillas to feed ourselves, but we were also

making extras to share with others during the lab

experience. I can see why the Mexicans relate to

foods such as corn tortillas to their soul

because it is such a big part of their life.

In answering what she thought about the practical application of the lab,

Beth summed up her experience and said:

I don’t think I would have gotten as much out the

class, had there been no lab. In lecture, we

could have discussed different cultures and

cultural processes, but I wouldn’t have had a

real understanding of it. By using different

techniques, and cooking different cultural dishes

in the lab, I feel like I got a better sense of

the cultures we were learning about .

218 Now that the lab is over, I feel that I have a

better understanding of cultures outside of the

US and their cooking practices .

I’ve learned that what is familiar and common

practices to me as a US citizen is not the same

elsewhere. I really never took the time to think

about how different practices were around the

world in terms of food. From the lab, I now have

a greater appreciation for food and have realized

how lucky the US is to have such a broad range of

foods and cooking styles. With just the lecture,

I would not have grasped these concepts.

Overall, I think the lab was very beneficial and

it would be hard for me to imagine the class

without it, seeing the lab as a whole was a very

fulfilling and worthwhile experience.

Observations and comments. These final Lab comments revealed the students’ cumulative understanding of the material synthesized from their practical work in the kitchen laboratory. Each student Reflections revealed that their intellectual journey was richer and their memory more lasting as a result of the practical experience of working with their hands.

219 Although I will discuss each student transformation individually in the next section, I wanted to take a moment to comment on Beth’s journey.

Beth represented about a third of the students in the class. She came to class with an unwittingly xenophobic view of the world. Her Lab Reports, particularly her Reflections, were starkly ignorant of other places and cultures. However, Beth was metaphorically “stirred” to cultural awareness by the lab and it was unlike anything she had previously experienced at UVM. Her final comments give testimony to Beth’s slow, but important, transformation.

These final Lab comments revealed a cumulative understanding of the material gleaned from their practical work in the kitchen. Each student’s intellectual journey through the class was made richer and deeper as a result of their innate interest in using their hands. Dewey called hands-on activity a “thinking tool” (Tanner, 2004, p. 155). Although

I will discuss each student individually in my conclusion, I wanted to take a moment to comment once again on Beth’s transformation. Watching

Beth’s slow transformation, I am convinced that had she been able to move through class without the food laboratory experience, she would not have changed, however slight, her narrow perspective on culture.

220 Chapter Summary

In this chapter, 10 cooking lessons are presented followed by student lab report comments about the interaction with the lesson. The students studied food and culture as a topic within a kitchen laboratory using Dewey’s kitchen methodology as a guide. The hands-on focus of the class required clear practical instructions coupled with a theoretical underpinning suitable for a college level course. Over the 15-week long semester, one can witness each student’s transformation as s/he cooks and learns within this stimulating lab environment.

221 Chapter Seven

Creative Synthesis

Findings

Dewey defined transformation as reconciling a past belief with a new experience. One “changed” on a continuum from what was, to what now is. It was Dewey’s hope that we would “change” for the good of all human kind becoming more tolerant, participatory and pluralistic.

My goals for this project were not quite that lofty. It was my intention to test a pedagogical framework and for Amy to teach about connections between food and culture. However, along the way, the students did transform into more mature thinkers. They did change previous perceptions. Their practical cooking experience gave them depth in their intellectual and emotional understanding of the material and, I dare say, they became better global citizens.

In analyzing each student’s transformation on the Rubric, I initially placed Kim at an Apprentice level early in the semester, but she soon moved to a Technician, and by mid-term was engaging at a Cook level.

Her intellectual ability to think and write like a Cook did not happen until she had had enough practical experience of cooking like a Cook. In my opinion, it was the practical “act” of cooking that changed her previous perceptions – much more than her exemplary, but almost automatic,

222 ability to intellectualize the readings and lecture. For Kim, her theoretical

“fusion” with the concrete practice of cooking and eating was the key to sharpening her “thinking” skills. Her repeated comments about the thrill of immersing herself into each new culture’s cuisine by handling tools and practicing methods of preparation visibly enriched her experience. In the end, her abstract thinking was made clearer and this new found clarity facilitated her transformation.

Jake started the class as an Apprentice. Because he had kitchen experience, his practical skills were better than average. His intellectual foundation was adequate, but, because he had not valued it previously, was fragile. Jake hovered at the Apprentice level for several weeks and then moved to Technician by mid-term. His writings were starkly insightful and his insatiable need to understand the kitchen work propelled him to

Cook level soon after mid-term.

Jake’s transformation was directly related to his ability to learn with his hands. If ever there was a more perfect example of Dewey’s pedagogical position, it was Jake’s experience. Jake eschewed the intellectual process – in his lab writings, he craves the practical experience and wrings his hands at the lack of it in the academy. Fascinatingly, it is through his practical experience in the Lab that Jake finds his way to an appreciation for intellectual knowledge. The blended learning model in

223 the Lab opened him up to “wanting” the theoretical and, as a result, he transformed.

Beth came to the lab as a Novice. She stayed a novice until mid- term when she moved to an Apprentice. Interestingly, Beth’s intellectual resistance began to melt away by the sheer repetition of the practical experience. Over and over, Lab protocols required her to touch, smell, chop, stir, cook, and taste “strange” food. Eventually, she was not comfortable with her own excuses for not participating. Her writings reflected her slow, but steady, acceptance and understanding of what it meant to be “other.” By the end of class, Beth admits that she would never have forced herself to intellectualize about another culture if it had not been literally “put in her mouth.” In the end, she transformed from

“very resistant” to “less resistant” as a direct effect of her physical engagement in the practical process.

My findings are consistent with all 27 of the 28 students (one student did not progress because of personal problems). Remarkably, in each of the three categories, the transformational experience is similar. When asked if the lab focus made a difference in their understanding of the material, a collective and unequivocal response of “without a doubt” was heard. I think the reason this unanimous view resonated so positively was because the students had had little previous college experience of

224 “learning” in a contextualized environment. The novelty of cooking in a university classroom while learning about culture was unprecedented.

Almost as if the words contextualized learning environment is cheating, I had one student say with some guilty pleasure, “I feel like I am playing.”

The kitchen experience did indeed create an atmosphere of play, but why does playing feel out of place in the academy? In support of more play in the classroom, philosopher and educator Lipman (1988) captured a definition of play by stating that:

In play – whole-part relationships are more immediately

available to the student than in story: for the latter to work,

keeping the students attention while the “sequentialized’

events of a story unfold is achieved through pictures and

even momentum. The fragmentizing approach to teaching is

simply one which neglects play for the sake of story: the final

result is textbook instruction and fragmentational testing

processes – the story is actually missing! (p. 64)

The connection between play and story is important. To Lipman

(1988), play is what happens when students react to the whole story. Play is the active space where the individual, through circular, back and forth motion, arrives at resolution (p. 65). In other words, play allows for a sort of self-regulation; to control the pace of one’s own cognitive and learning.

225 Perhaps it felt like play because we used food and novel instruments as our learning tool. The students certainly enjoyed the atmosphere, but I am not convinced that was all. I think it felt like play because we conducted the class more like the Dewey Lab where student inquiry was paramount to the lesson and not deadened by prescribed outcomes.

We allowed them to pursue their interests within careful boundaries created by the Lab Report, and to them, this freedom to explore felt like play. We came to class with a sharp awareness of plot and story line, but we were never sure where the actor’s “play” would take us, and that was the point.

Results and Implications

What is fascinating about my research is that it implies that cooking can be a potent methodology for a range of classroom topics. This emerging view within the larger body of research surrounding Dewey’s pedagogical theory of learning by doing is an important addition to the literature in experiential education and food and society.

In analyzing my results, I would like to offer three observations as to why our particularly Food and Culture class was so successful and of important educational value at UVM and potentially at other institutions of higher learning.

226 First, the Food Laboratory Report was instrumental to our success.

The repetition of the Mise en Place, Data analysis and Comparison created a “laboratory point of view” in that it provided rules, order and discipline for the lab activity. Additionally, the Reflection section provided space for the intellectual part of problem solving. This critical addition to the otherwise empirical Lab Report allowed us to blend the practical with the intellectual in one central document. The Lab Report protocols reinforced intensive practice while simultaneously allowing the students control of the intellectual methods required for personal mastery of the practical skills. Students learned practical rules and how the rules shaped the interaction with food. The Lab Report created a discipline for thinking and learning.

Second, the teachers were highly skilled both intellectually and practically. Amy and I were competent experienced teachers with a clear sense of our curriculum as a cumulative process. In addition and very importantly, we were both seasoned cooks and had traveled extensively. Consequently, we were able to vertically integrate themes and ideas from one lab to the next because our comfort with the subject matter and pedagogy.

Finally, the Food Laboratory is the best possible framework for experiential learning. Cooking engages students at an almost instinctive

227 level; the smells, sounds, sights, touches, and tastes overwhelmed and excited their senses. The constant action and required involvement left no student unnoticed – everyone participated. Additionally, the Food

Lab and the study of food have uniquely integrative attributes that covered a broad range of student interests. Our lessons required them to integrate data and analyze information from a wide variety of disciplines, from agriculture, literature, and nutrition to economics, biology, ecology, political science, and history.

These three factors contributed to our success, but also demonstrated how food and cooking can be at the center of a unique pedagogy that provides distinct opportunities in multidisciplinary domains at UVM and at other universities across the country. I would be remiss not to mention some potential impediments in using the UVM Food Lab or other higher education kitchen classrooms, so let me discuss some of them next.

I start with emphasizing my first two points above regarding the Lab

Report and qualified teachers as these two variables were critical to our positive results and without them we would have been less successful.

Importantly, the design of the Lab Report, the central organizing document, reinforced a blended learning methodology by firmly holding both the empirical and theoretical focus together. For example, the only

228 other food course in UVM’s Food Lab is empirically based (in the home economics tradition) and several students who had taken the class commented that it was rote, mechanical and uninteresting. Clearly, in this situation, if the Lab Report only focused on theoretical ideas, the discipline of the practical and empirical reinforcement would have been equally missed.

Similarly, without teachers versed in both practical cooking skills and intellectual rigor, the flexible nature of the lesson implementation would not have occurred. In order to benefit from the adaptable characteristics of the Food Laboratory, the teacher must possess a comfort level with the cooking process. A professor could certainly teach a course in the food lab at UVM, or at other institutions, without cooking skills, but, like the

Dewey School, would need to be co-taught with someone with an expertise in the area. For example, if a professor wanted to teach students about the environment through the food they prepared, but had no cooking skills, teaming with a professor who did would be a synergistic experience for both.

Finally, another challenge to the successful conducting of a class in the Food Laboratory at UVM or at another university, perhaps less tangible is the professor’s pedagogical fortitude to stay true to the Dewey methodology. First, there would need to be an understanding of Dewey’s

229 philosophical underpinnings or reasons why using the kitchen to teach about the world is unique and relevant, and then the ability to defend it to the rest of the academy. Without a certain amount of resilience, I am afraid the more powerful teaching paradigms in the academy would quickly undermine the effort.

Clearly, the Food Lab as classroom is not appropriate for all subjects but I urge us to think about its application in all disciplines. Even hard sciences need to consider the opportunity as the California Institute of

Technology did in a recent article when it announced that it is bringing cooking into a six week course for some of its engineers (Technology,

2007). Another positive sign is that many schools are starting to teach about food across disciplines however few seem to be not pulling the coursework into the kitchen. In reviewing the 500 page Agriculture, Food and Society Syllabi and Course Materials 2003 Collection from hundreds of campuses across the country, I did not see any courses that offered a blended learning model - all were offered solely in a lecture format

(Deutsch).

Nevertheless, despite the above challenges, there are ample opportunities to pursue more interdisciplinary coursework in a Food

Laboratory or campus kitchen. Food, its preparation and consumption, is at the very core of our existence and anyone who has taught a course

230 focused on food quickly learns how profoundly the topic resonates with students. Since food is an interdisciplinary subject, it lends itself to a wide range or courses and, more importantly, a variety of student populations, such that one can frame problems to address many needs and interests.

Whether our experience with the students in the Food Laboratory is generalizable for other coursework is not completely clear; however, the positive impact our learning experience had on 27 students certainly lends itself to more exploration.

231 Chapter Eight

Conclusion

UVM’s intersection between Dewey’s legacy, his distinctive kitchen methodology, and the pioneering efforts of the women in the Food Lab, put the institution in a unique position to be nationally recognized for its cooking pedagogy. That is, if we choose to embrace our heritage, our experiential roots, and re-tool certain courses and curriculum to meet this claim. The learning model we developed uniquely incorporates a mix of techniques and approaches suitable for a wide spectrum of applications here at UVM and at many other institutions of higher learning around the world.

When Dewey was testing his pedagogical philosophy in Chicago, he was not building a place for teacher training or designing a psychology. He was testing holism – the idea that every subject should be taught as an aspect of a greater whole and what was learned was relevant. Over the years, the mind-body dualism that Dewey did away with in his school have persisted in higher education where the ancient prejudice against handwork has prevailed: “When schools are equipped with laboratories, shops and gardens, where dramatizations, plays and games are freely used, opportunities exist for reproducing situations of life,

232 and for acquiring and applying information and ideas in carrying forward of progressive experience” (Dewey, 1916, p. 191).

Sadly, when thinking of adding concepts of “play” to coursework within the academy comments, such as lacking in rigor, anti-intellectual, even too vocational, seem to resonate. Conversely, when colleges and universities have succeeded in creating experiential coursework, in some cases, it is externalized through separate offices or in internships or summer programs off campus. This separation, or tidy compartmentalization, from the “real” intellectual work of the academy, perpetuates an obsolete notion of learning. Quite paradoxically, it can sometimes create graduates with weak thinking skills, precisely because they have had no hands-on experience. Today’s students will face the responsibilities of freedom in a complex, dynamic world that does not organize itself neatly into academic disciplines; they need preparation for participation in democracy, as well as economy, on a global scale.

There are emerging signs that several colleges and universities are rising to this challenge however. As mentioned in earlier, there are several colleges and universities in the United States who have embraced and developed engaged learning environments, many through food study.

233 One example at Yale University that has captured the imagination of undergraduates and built upon the university’s commitment to nurturing informed, responsible citizens is the Yale

Sustainable Food Project. This experiential learning program brings food from the Yale garden to the Yale dining halls. The Sustainable

Food Project is a laboratory for extended, sensory learning. As a result of the project, there is now a one-acre farm on campus – a launching site for accredited academic courses, informal workshops, and campus events highlighting food and agriculture. Through such activities, the project supports both hands-on knowledge of plant biology and careful long-term thinking about the relationship between economics and ethics (Yale, 2005).

Moreover, the project has fostered new avenues of academic exploration at the university. Student term papers, senior theses, and doctoral dissertations have explored the program’s potential role across disciplines and its impact on the local economy. There has been a marked increase in courses related to food and agriculture in disciplines as diverse as biology, psychology, forestry, history, and political science (Yale, 2005) .

UVM has a special opportunity right within its grasp to claim

Dewey’s legacy. Cooking and Food Study are ripe topics for

234 experiential design. I propose the learning model we developed connect the University farm, dining halls and food labs for a potent and complete sequence in understanding the interdisciplinary nature of the food system and its application to our society. We should introduce this model in problem based learning environments in as many disciplines as possible.

Over 30 years ago, President Jon Howard of Lewis and Clark

College, a small liberal arts college in Oregon, was quoted as saying,

“I see no reason to surrender to general forces or bad habits in society.

The old canard about colleges - that they are always the last to practice what they teach - I've always deplored that. It seems to me that this college has a moral and professional obligation to apply something when we know it is right” (Manning-Anderson ,1976, p. 44).

On UVM’s President’s webpage, President Daniel Fogel combines the mission statement and values with aspirations to not only be a “distinguished institution with a proud history, but to have abiding concern for environment, health and liberal education”

(Fogel, 2005). There are other equally strong commitments to social justice, diversity, innovation, ethical decision making, and finally to the land-grant commitment to share knowledge with the community, locally and beyond. All of these goals are ideal areas in which to

235 create interdisciplinary curricula, especially about food. Cooking pedagogy uniquely creates a learning environment that teaches us how to cooperate with and engage in our natural world and communities, and, in effect, create thriving democracies. Berry (1972) agrees: “What universities, at least the public-supported ones, are mandated to make or to help to make is human beings in the fullest sense of those words – not just trained workers or knowledgeable citizens but responsible heirs and members of the human culture” (p.

77).

At the conclusion of the last lab, our tortilla making professor, flushed from cooking and instructing, turned to Amy and me and said with sheer revelation, “What I saw in the students today is why I take them to experience Oaxaca. I didn’t think it was reproducible, but it happened here in the UVM kitchen.” Cooking thickens our experience, so let us cook more together as we envision our future.

236 REFERENCES

Bandel, P.B. (1966). Complaint letter from Prof. Betty Bandel. P.L. Rowell.

University of Vermont, Burlington, VT : Complaint letter on Waterman

Foodservice.

Belenky, M.F., Clinchy, B.M., Goldberger, N.R., & Tarule, J.M. (1986).

Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Mind and

Voice. New York: Basic Books.

Berry, W. (1989). The Pleasures of Eating. Journal of Gastronomy, 5 (2), 126.

Bevier, I., & Usher, S. (1906). The home economics movement . Boston:

Whitcomb and Barrows.

Bourdieu, P. (2005). Tasting of luxury, taste of necessity. In C. Korsmeyer

(Ed.), The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink (pp.

72-85). New York: Berg.

Bowen, S. (2005). Engaged learning: Are we all on the same page?

[Electronic Version]. Peer Review , 5-10. Retrieved June 26, 2006

from http://www.aacu.org/peerreview/pr-wi05/pr-wi05feature1.cfm

Bickman, M. (2000). Reforming all the time: Recuperating the tradition of

the active Mind for Teacher Education.

Brown, M., & Paolucci, B. (1978). Home economics: A definition .

Washington, DC: American Home Economics Association.

237 Chickering, A., & Reisser, L. (1993). Education and idenity . San Francisco:

Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Crain, W.C. (1985). Theories of development . New York: Prentice Hall.

Dewey, J. (1910). How we think . Washington, DC: Heath and Co.

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education . New York: The MacMillian

Company.

Dewey, J. (Ed.).(1922). Human nature and conduct: An introduction to

social psychology. John Dewey: The middle works . Carbondale and

Edwardville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Dewey, J. (1936). The theory of the Chicago experiment . The Dewey

School . A.C.M. Edwards, Katherine Camp . New York: D. Appleton-

Century Company Inc.

Dewey, J. (1939). Experience and education . New York: The Macmillan

Company.

Dewey, J. (1959). The child and the curriculum. In M.S. Dworkin (Ed.),

Dewey on education . New York: Teachers College Press.

Dewey, J. (1978). Psychology and social practice. In J. Hilgard (Ed.),

American Psychology in Historical Perspective (pp. 65–80).

Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. (Originally

published in Psychological Review , 7, 105–124). Speech given to the

American Psychological Association in New Haven, CT in 1899.

238 Dewey, M. (2000). The future of home economics . Journal of Family and

Consumer Sciences 92 (1), 1-2.

Dommeyer, F.C. (1946). The origins of Dewey's instrumentalism. Philosophy

and Phenomenological Research 6 (3), 476-478.

Edwards, A.C., & Mayhew, K.C. (1936). The Dewey school . New York:

Appleton-Century, Inc.

Esteva, G., & Prakash, M.S. (1988). Grassroots Post-Modernism - Remaking

the soil of Cultures . London: Zed Books LTD.

Farmer, F.M. (1925). The Boston cooking-school cook book . Boston: Little

Brown, and Company.

Fogel, D.M. (2005, September 26, 2003). President's welcome . Retrieved

March 31, 2005, 2005, from

http://www.uvm.edu/about_uvm/?page=president.html

Food and Nutrition Department (June 5, 1953). Final exam in food and

nutrition 104 (Meal Planning and Service). Home Economics 1950-

1960 . Burlington, VT: University of Vermont Bailey Howe Archives.

Galdos, A. (2000). When pragmatism and instrumentalism collide:

Lonergan’s resolution of the Peirce/Dewey debate on theory and

practice in science. Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 18 , 123-

144.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice . Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press.

239 Herrick, M. (1996). Assessment of student achievement and learning. What

would Dewey say? A ‘recent’ interview with John Dewey. Journal of

Vocational and Technical Education , 1-17.

Heylighen, C. (1997). Metaphysics, principia cybernetica web . Retrieved

February 4, 2007 from http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/METAPHYS.html

Hilgard, E.R. (1953). Introduction to psychology . New York: Harcourt, Brace

and Company.

Hoeflin, R. (1988). History of a college: From woman’s course to home

economics to human ecology . Manhattan, KS: Ag Press.

Instrumentalism. (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved March 19,

2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online:

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9042505

Johnson, R.J., Gregory, D., Pratt, G., & Watts, M. (2000). The dictionary of

human geography. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Kinsella, S. (1978). Food on campus: A recipe for action . Emmaus, PA:

Rodale Press.

Kloppemberg, J.T. (1996). Pragmatisim: An old name for some new ways

of thinking? The Journal of American History 83 (1), 100-138.

240 Kockelmans, J. (1978). Some philosophical reflections on the position

paper "Home Economics: A Definition." In M. Brown and B. Paolucci

(Eds.). Home economics: A definition . Washington, DC: American

Home Economics Association.

Kohlberg, L. (1971). Stages of Moral Develoment . Toronto, Canada:

University of Toronto Press.

Kummer, C. (2004). Good-bye, Cryovac. Atlantic Monthly , 197-202.

Lamprecht, S.P. (1924). An idealistic source of instrumentalist logic. Mind

33 (132), 415-427.

Levelle, B.B.W. (1938). Foodservice in institutions . New York: John Wiley and

Sons.

Levenstein, H. (1993). Paradox of plenty: A social history of eating in

modern America . New York: Oxford Press.

Lindsay, J.I. (1954). The UVM traditions look forward - 1791-1904 . Burlington,

VT: Self-Published.

Manning-Anderson, J. (1976). A student's guide to improving the campus

food service. Washington, DC: Public Citizen.

Menand, L. (2001). The metaphysical club . New York: Strauss and Giroux.

Online Computer Library Center (2007). Biography of Melville Dewey .

Retrieved February 4, 2007, from

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/resources/biography/

241

Perfetti, R. (1956). Letter to the editor. The Vermont Cynic , p. 73.

Perry, W.G. (1970). Forms of intellectual and ethical development in

college years: A scheme . Troy, MO: Holt, Rinhardt, and Winston.

Peterson, R. (1978). Critical discussion of home economics: A definition.

Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan State University Press.

Peterson, J. (1998). Sauces: Classic and Contemporay Sauce Making (2nd

ed.). New York: Wiley and Sons.

Provenzoi, Jr., E.F. (1979). History as experiment: The role of the laboratory

school in the development of John Dewey's philosophy of history.

The History Teacher 12 (3), 373-382.

Recorder, U. (1888). Chart of Accounts. B. o. T. minutes.

Chart of accounts for food disbursement.

Reiger, K. (1987). All but the kitchen sink: On the significance of domestic

science and the silence of social theory. Theory and Society,16 , 497-

526.

Reporter, S. (1956). University announces cafeteria ticket plan. The

Vermont Cynic , p. 73.

Revel, J.F. (2005). Retreiving tastes: Two sources of cuisine. In C. Korsmeyer

(Ed.), The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink (pp.

51--56). New York: Berg.

242

Richards, E.S. (1882). The chemistry of cooking and cleaning: A manual for

housekeeping . Boston: Whitcomb and Barrows.

Roemischer, J. (2006). Dewey's educational theory as a theory of "work"

and "practice" - Formulation of a teaching spectrum. SUNY

Plattsburgh : 1-5.

Roemischer, J. (2006). Finding Dewey's position on "Teaching

Methodology" within the context of a general schematic of possible

methodologies. SUNY Plattsburg : 1-4.

Ross, J. (2007). NFS 53 Basic concepts of foods - Spring 2007 . Burlington, VT:

University of Vermont.

Rowell, P. L. (1966). Letters . B. Bandel. President Lyman Rowell Archives Box

8.

Schlosser, E. (2002). Fast food nation . New York: Houghton Mifflin

Company.

Shapiro, L. (2001). Perfection salad: Women and cooking at the turn of the

century. New York: Random House.

Shapiro, L. (2004). Something from the oven: Reinventing dinner in the

1950s America . New York: Viking Penguin.

243 Smith, M.E.B. (1920). Journals . Boston: Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe

Campus.

Student Editor (1956). Editorial. The Vermont Cynic . University of Vermont

Student Newspaper. 73: 4.

Tanner, L.N. (2004). Dewey's laboratory school: Lessons for today . New

York: Teachers College Press.

Taylor, R.P. (2004). Citizenship and democratic doubt: The legacy of

progressive thought . Lawerence, KA: University Press of Kansas.

Technology, C.I. (2007) Students discover joy of cooking. Caltech 336

Volume, DOI.

Tyzbir, R. (2007). History Lesson in UVM's HED. C. Belliveau. Burlington, VT : 1-

8.

University, Y. (2005). Sustainable food project . Retrieved May 6, 2005, from

http://www.yale.edu/sustainablefood/index.html .

Upin, J.S. (1993). Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Instrumentalism beyond

Dewey. Hypatia 8 (2), 38-63.

Vallett, P. (2007). Chemistry lab report. Burlington, VT: University of

Vermont.

Wayland, F. (1842). Thoughts on the present collegiate system in the US.

Boston.

244 Wesselhoeft, C. (1976). The Lewis and Clark expedition Into natural foods.

Prevention Magazine , 128.

Williams, B. (1987). A backward look - ahead home economics at the

University of Vermont. U.o.V.H. Economics , 72.

Yale, U. (2005). Sustainable food project . Retrieved May 6, 2005, from

http://www.yale.edu/sustainablefood/index.html

Yonan, J. (2004). Food for thought. Boston Globe . Boston : D1 and D5.

245 APPENDIX A

Engagement to Transformation Evaluation Rubric

Elements Novice Apprentice Technician Cook

Grammar, Writing is not Grammar, usage, Demonstrates an Demonstrates Usage, and clear, with little and mechanics ability to master complex writing Mechanics evidence of an interfere with GUM so that strategies to understanding of comprehension reader can engage readers college level of ideas. engage ideas. and transmit grammar, usage ideas, for and mechanics. example use of metaphor, analogy, transitions, parallel construction.

Does not follow Follows the lab The report Fluent and Organization the lab report format. Ideas, contains clear seamless format, ideas are though clear, are and logical organization— scattered, does not clearly progression of reader is clearly not support supported, ideas. The introduced to evidence. evidenced or organizing main idea, the cited. structure is components of appropriate to the notebook topic. Uses two flow easily from pieces of point to point, evidence per lab and conclusion report and cites synthesizes appropriately. points. Uses multiple clear and descriptive pieces of supporting evidence and cites appropriately.

246

Does not present Develops a Develops a mise en Develops a mise en Mise en a schematic for schematic mise en place schematic with place schematic Place mise en place. place but does not a linear sequence with a linear create a linear and explains each sequence and sequence from step from beginning explains each step first to last to end of the recipe from beginning to activity. or recipes. end of the recipe or recipes. Anticipates any possible problems with timing and finishing. The lab report The lab report The lab report not The lab report Results: does not convey conveys an only conveys an conveys and Cooking an understanding of understanding of the understanding of Experience understanding of the cooking experience but the experience, the cooking experience and connects to the connects to the experience or provides empirical empirical detail. empirical detail, provide detail of the and also refers to empirical detail results. present and past about the results. food lab experiences and lectures of self and

others Results: You understand You are engaged You are not only You are actively Readings the lab in the lab engaged in the topic engaged and can and experiment but experiment and of study but are able identify and Reflections are not able to are able through to connect the connect multiple engage it at its this experience to experiment with perspectives, most connect with the lecture. In other analysis and fundamental lecture topic of words you are able consequences. You technical level study. You can to provide context to do this through or identify and identify and what you are active sharing in connect the connect with your learning. Your conceptualization experience to personal writing reflects a and building of lecture. experience. deeper your reflections understanding of with lab mates. multiple Your writings perspectives, reflect a culture- analysis, and the centric analysis consequences. with recommendations that take full account of these multi- perspectives.

247 APPENDIX B

FOOD AND CULTURE SYLLABUS Instructor: Dr. Amy B. Trubek Office: 251 Carrigan Wing, Marsh Life Sciences Building Office Phone: 656-0833 Email: [email protected] Days: Discussion -Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00-12:15 Lab – Monday 1-3pm and Tuesday 9-11am Location: Terrill (Lab 3 rd Floor, Discussion 2 nd Floor) Office Hours: Tuesday 1:30-3:30pm and by appointment

Course Description: This course will use discursive and kinesthetic approaches in order to understand the complex, varied, and important ways culture makes food and food makes culture. Culture is the sum of our every day unconscious decisions, all the unreflective common sense beliefs and actions that shape how we eat, dress, pray, learn and more. Thus if we want to understand “culture,” we need to experience and participate i n such every day activities. In this class, cooking and eating will be our focus – a universal enterprise yet unbelievably varied and complex in what happens around the globe. Discussions, lectures, labs and tastings will guide us in our exploration of food and culture. Along the way we will consider food as a symbol, food as a marker of social hierarchy and individual identity, food as a part of religious and moral practices, and food as a result of environmental conditions. As part of the lab, students will learn basic cooking skills and the taste principles of several regions around the world.

Course Evaluation and Expectations:

I expect professional standards of behavior in the classroom. Cell phones and pagers should be turned off. Chronic tardiness is not acceptable. You are expected to come to lab and class every week, and if you are sick you need to contact me directly. Any missed labs will require that you make it up and if you miss more than one lab you will not pass that portion of the course. I expect participation from every student. The class is organized to promote dialogue and interaction. When you are in class and in lab you need to participate. I will be following all the lab teams to make sure there is full participation. Seize the day. I also intend to have

248 conversations during class and will call on people during discussions as well. All readings must be read completely before class. I will be leading class discussions and organizing in-class activities as much or more than I will be presenting lectures. We will have much better and more meaningful discussions if everyone comes in prepared. If you don’t understand a reading, bring in a list of questions – we can use them to begin our discussions. I do not accept late assignments . If you hand in a reflective essay or lab report late, you will be marked down 1 point for every day the assignment is overdue. You can email me assignments as attachments or hand them to me in class. All writing assignments should be typed and submitted in 12 point Times New Roman font, double spaced, with 1” margins. All assignments need to satisfy the standards of academic integrity. Plagiarism (not attributing other people’s ideas, arguments or phrases properly) and cheating will result in a failing grade.

Assessment: Class Participation: 10% Notebook: 60% • 12 reports/reflections (due every Friday at noon) You can hand them to me in class on Thursdays or send them to me via email at [email protected] . Each report will be assessed using a rubric; you will be able to get up to 20 points per report. Lab Practical: 10% Final Project: 20% • A portfolio or short essay synthesizing discussion and lab experience that can be submitted anytime between December 7 and December 14. All of the work for your class should be kept in a three-ring binder . This includes all your hand-outs related to lab, recipes, any extra readings, and all your lab reports. You should bring your binder to every lab and class; it will contain all the accumulated knowledge and experience we will be building and drawing upon over the course.

Part One: What is Food? What is Culture? Week One : Tuesday 8/29 Introduction Thursday 8/31 On being omnivores Read Chapters 1 and 2 in Everyone Eats

Week Two :

249 Tuesday 9/5 Food: When Nature meets Culture Read Chapters 3 and 4 in Everyone Eats Thursday 9/7 Biology and Environment: The Human senses and food. Read Chapters 5 and 6 in Everyone Eats Read Chapter 2 in The Taste Culture Reader Report #1 due

Week Three - Culture in Practice Tuesday 9/12 Cooking – linked to domesticity, a cultural skills Read: Excerpt from Goody, Cooking, Cuisine and Class Thursday 9/14 Cooking as a professional activity Read: Excerpt from Trubek, Haute Cuisine Report #2 due

Week Four - Culture in Practice Tuesday 9/22 Discourse of Food Read Chapters 7 and 8 in Everyone Eats Read: Chapter 3 and 3a in The Taste Culture Reader Thursday 9/24 Cookbooks and Cooking Shows Read Ferguson, Accounting For Taste, pp. 149-165 View Julia Child and Alton Brown shows Report #3 due

Week Five : Culture in Practice Tuesday 9/26 Food from a Place – how do boundaries get determined? Read: Chapter Chapter 12 in Everyone Eats and excerpt from Sidney Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom Thursday 9/28 Food in a Place – exploring goût du terroir. Read: Chapter 25 in The Taste Culture Reader Report #4 due

Part Two: How Does Food Reveal the Social Order? How Does Food Make the Social Order? The Case of France Week Six : Cuisine High and Low Tuesday, 10/3 Taste and Cuisine Read: Chapter 4 in The Taste Culture Reader Thursday 10/5 The high and the low Read: Chapters 5 and 6 in The Taste Culture Reader Report #5 due

Week Seven : Codification Tuesday 10/10 French haute cuisine as professional code Read: Excerpt from Haute Cuisine , Chapter 23 in The Taste Culture Reader

250 Thursday 10/12 Other culinary codes Read: Chapters 13, 14 and 22 in The Taste Culture Reader Report #6 due

Part Three: What Makes Food Pure? What Makes You Pure? Or, How Do Religious Beliefs and Rules Shape What Gets Eaten? The Case of India Week 8 : Purity and Pollution Tuesday 10/17 Dirt and Disgust Read excerpt from Mary Douglas Purity and Danger (introduction, chapters 2 and 3) Thursday 10/19 Hinduism Read Chapter 10 in Everyone Eats Read Chapter 14 in The Taste Culture Reader Report #7 due

Week 9 : Diet and Disease Tuesday 10/24 Humoral Theories Read: Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance, Chapter 2 Thursday 10/26 Contemporary Theories Chapter 9 in Everyone Eats Chapters 1 and 2 in The Migrants Table Report #8 due

Part Four: How Does Where You Come From Shape What Eat Now? The Case of the United States Week 10 : Exchanges - Plants, Dishes, Ideas Tuesday 10/31 Plant and Animal Exchanges Chapters 11, 12 and 13 in Everyone Eats Excerpt from Raymond Sokolov Why We Eat What We Eat, Chapter One Thursday 11/2 The New World and Old World Excerpt from Raymond Sokolov Why We Eat What We Eat, Ingredients for Change Report #9 due Week 11 : Race and Ethnicity Tuesday 11/7 The Melting Pot Read: Excerpt from Raymond Sokolov Why We Eat What We Eat , Revolution Now and Chapters 35, 36, and 37 in The Taste Culture Reader Thursday 11/9 Assimilation or not? Read: Chapters 4, 5 and 6 in The Migrant’s Table Report #10 due

251 Part Five: What if the World is Your Oyster? How Is Globalization Transforming Food? Culture? The Case of Mexico Week 12 : Comida versus Alimento Tuesday 11/ 14 Read: Esteva and Prakash, Grassroots Postmodernism , Chapter 3. Thursday 11/16 Read: Excerpt from Jeffrey Pilcher, Que Vivan Los Tamales Report #11 due Week 13 : Myth and Movement Tuesday 11/ 28 Corn as Life Thursday 11/30 Corn as Commodity Report #12 due

Conclusion: How Do We Reflect on Our Food Memories, Experiences, and Expectations? Week 14: Memory Tuesday 12/ 5 Read Chapters 31 and 32 in The Taste Culture Reader Lab Practical

252 APPENDIX C

IRB

253

254

255